Julian Bliss clarinet

Haydn String Quartet in D, op. 20 no. 4

David Bruce Gumboots

Roxanna Panufnik Modlitwa

Weber Clarinet Quintet

The joyous rhythms and klezmer-like wheeling of David Bruce’s Gumboots celebrates the resilience of black miners in South Africa under apartheid, who were chained together and made to wear wellington boots while they worked in the flooded gold mines, but developed a form of dancing by slapping together their boots and chains. It makes a stark contrast to the beauty and poignancy of Roxanna Panufnik’s prayer-poem evoking the Virgin of Skempe, a miraculous wooden statue in rural Poland. To partner these two contemporary works, the Carducci Quartet and Julian Bliss offer the wit and invention of Haydn and the high-stepping exuberance of Weber’s virtuosic Clarinet Quintet.

‘It isn’t just his technique, though that is astonishing enough. It’s the wit, poise and vivacity in his playing. In short, it is the pure intuition leading him straight to the heart of what he plays.’ – The Times on Julian Bliss

Pre-concert and interval bar