First performed by Roger Arve Vigulf and the Pluri_Art Festival Orchestra, conducted by Viacheslav Valeev.
Recorded in 2012 by Mark van de Wiel (clarinet) and Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Vladimir Ashkenazy.
I very much enjoyed preparing and performing Distant Words. Flint Juventino understands the clarinet's voice very well, and gives it a combination of lyricism and virtuosity, which is most rewarding to play. I was thrilled to have the chance to record it with Maestro Ashkenazy and my Philharmonia colleagues.
Mark van de Wiel
Distant Words (a title, one suspects, where the composer has indulged in a little wordplay on "words" and "worlds"!) is, for a work scored for a homogeneous group of instruments in the chamber-music tradition, an astonishingly multi-faceted composition. The extreme range of the clarinet is given a virtuosic but at the same time restrained, almost ascetic, solo part. Light and vitality permeate the whole piece the composer hints at a sense of euphoria over the presence of the girl, but at the same time the listener feels a hesitant tenderness, a distance of Schubertian proportions.
Wolfgang Plagge, professor