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