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Emil Viklicky Trio

Ballads and More

Arta F10161

Anyone who attended last year's Cheltenham Festival is likely to have seen this trio – pianist Emil Viklicky, bassist Frantisek Uhlir, drummer Laco Tropp – playing an hour-long set that has been immortalised on the album Cookin' in Bonn (Dekkor), and which was described on this site as 'affectingly lyrical when addressing his speciality material, Moravian folk songs', but 'rumbustious where required' and 'touching and robust'.

Here, the Moravian folk songs are absent, and instead, the trio address a mix of standards, both ballad material (Styne/Cahn's 'I Fall in Love Too Easily', Jimmy Rowles's 'Peacocks', Chaplin/Parsons/Turner's 'Smile') and mid-tempo tunes ('Dedicated to You', Cole Porter's 'All of You'), the odd piece by Keith Jarrett ('Coral'), Richie Bierach ('Leaving') or Pat Metheny ('Always and Forever'), and two in-band originals.

The result is a well-balanced set drawing on all Viklicky's considerable strengths: a chiming delicacy infused with an attractive yearning quality and the capacity to harden as required into energetic vigour, a wonderfully fertile improvisational imagination shared by the eloquent, pure-toned Uhlir (who deservedly shares the solo spotlight throughout), and a musical intelligence that enhances tunes' strengths without unnecessarily distorting them (his subtle shift into mid-tempo during 'I Fall in Love Too Easily' a case in point).

Very much a working band, totally at ease with, yet capable of striking sparks off, each other, Viklicky/Uhlir/Tropp are a world-class, elegant unit who should be caught live if the opportunity arises.