Gig review: Tim Kliphuis Trio

Published on Tuesday 6 October 2009 18:53

TIM KLIPHUIS TRIO **** BRUNTON THEATRE, MUSSELBURGH

ALTHOUGH Dutch by birth and classically trained at the Amsterdam Conservatoire, the young genre-blurring violinist Tim Kliphuis has – to judge by both his accent and press cuttings on his website – spent a lot of time in Scotland.

Having originally met his trio partners, guitarist Nigel Clark and double bassist Roy Percy, at a gig in Glasgow, he further cemented this kinship here with a deft nod to the Year of Homecoming Year, in the shape of some reworked Robert Burns numbers alongside his established stock-in-trade of Grappelli-esque gypsy swing and jazzed-up classical tunes.

It proved a deliciously effervescent mix, with Kliphuis's brilliantly fluent and expansive range of technique making equally lissom, captivating work of Hot Club and Hoagy Carmichael standards, Ae Fond Kiss, Auld Lang Syne, Tchaikovsky's Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy and Pachelbel's Canon in D.

His freewheeling versatility and often playful lightness of touch were underpinned by formidable control and attention to detail, enriching the foot-tapping accessibility of his music with compelling virtuosic depth.

He was more than ably matched by Clark and Percy, both in the complementary finesse and brio of their solos and exhilarating dynamism of their interplay. Kliphuis's chosen breadth of repertoire and often impish mien might seem to risk courting charges of dilettantism, if he weren't so patently and exquisitely in command of his material.