MUSICWEB:
Born in Tenerife, Cristo Barrios is a multiple award winning clarinettist who studied with, amongst others, Richard Stoltzman. He can certainly play and this very varied recital gives him ample opportunity to display us his abilities.
 
Bernstein's Sonata is his op. 1 and it's a jolly piece, with lots of good humour and tricky corners for the player. I'm not a great lover of Bernstein the composer – unless he's on Broadway – but this little work is a gem and would grace any recital in which it was played.
 
Salvador Brotons is a name new to me, but he has an impressive pedigree. As well as being a composer, Brotons has been conductor and Music Director of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra since 1991. Born into a family of musicians in Barcelona, Brotons studied both at home and in the USA on a Fulbright Scholarship. He's played flute in the Orquestra del Teatre del Liceu de Barcelona and the Orquestra Ciutat de Barcelona (1981–1985), whilst as a composer he's written over 80 works and received fifteen composition awards. This Sonata , which is in two movements, is very well written for the two instruments, is very pleasant but doesn't really go anywhere. It sits rather uncomfortably between Bernstein and Berg whose Vier Stücke , op.5 are given very subtle performances, and this suits the elusiveness of the music very well. Almost Webernian in their concision, but nowhere near as angular as that master, Barrios really brings out the lyrical side of the music, especially in the final, Langsam , movement.

Then comes Arnold Bax's Sonata , full of fresh Englishness, I've never felt the Irish connection here. Barrios plays this well and understands that the first movement is the most intimate music on the disk and he holds back in his delivery. In the very fast, helter–skelter scherzo he lets go and really relishes the challenges the composer has given him. The quiet ending is quite magical.
 
Esa–Pekka Salonen's Nachtlieder is the product of a very young man and they are aphoristic in their utterance. Salonen is feeling his way here, and the music is reminiscent of Boulez and Webern, but there's always the feeling that here is a new and original voice finding itself. We now know what this man is capable of and it's exciting to hear how it all started.
 
Honegger's Sonatine is a product of his days with Les Six. Although you'd never guess it from the first two movements – they are quite dark and penetrating in their sombre way. The finale leaves you in no doubt as to the origin of the music and in a mere 82 seconds the whole of Paris in the jazz age is summed up with admirable economy and precision.
 
It must be said that this is a most unusual recital with programming which, on paper at least, shouldn't really work. However, with such fine playing from both musicians, every piece comes alive and speaks in its own voice as music which has grown from a tradition and is continuing it into the next generation.
 
The sound is good, with a wide spread for the two players. The excellent notes are in English, Spanish, French and German. Most enjoyable.  
Bob Briggs

INTERNATIONAL RECORD REVIEW:
Recently, I was purchasing several used classical LPs from a dealer and my order included two trumpet recitals. ‘Oh, you're a trumpet player?' he ventured. Not so, and the interchange made me wonder if he asked similar questions when other customers purchased piano or violin discs. Why should a trumpet or clarinet recital, but not a violin recital, be considered a ‘speciality release'? After all, playing the clarinet is not a prerequisite for enjoying an hour of music played on that instrument. Here, Cristo Barrios and Clinton Cormany have selected repertoire that has the potential to appeal to anyone, and they present it in the most advantageous light.

Bernstein's Sonata, composed in the early 1940s, is a repertory staple. Cormany's booklet note is very frank, telling us that the Sonata was dedicated to the clarinetist ‘David Oppenheim, with whom Bernstein had an affair at the Tanglewood Festival the following year'. Despite Bernstein's youth, this work already bears his imprint. The present performers are very similar to Peter Furniss and David Leihir Jones on the comparison CD. The latter are recorded with a slightly more flattering perspective, but Barrios and Cormany are more playful in the faster sections of the second movement.

Taking the remaining works chronologically, we start with Berg. Only one of the Vier Stücke is longer than two minutes, which hardly gives listeners time to remember that they are supposed to be intimidated by Berg's atonal music. As Cormany points out, the four pieces together constitute ‘an interpretation of a traditional sonata', although individually, each is a thought complete unto itself. Honegger's Sonatina seems to thumb its nose at Berg, particularly in the naughty third movement, which brings both the Sonatina and the CD to a giddy close. Barrios and Cormany enjoy themselves greatly here, yet the music's rough-and-tumble spirit doesn't ruffle their control over technical matters.

The two-movement Sonata by Bax is a treasurable English pastorale, but one that also tells an interesting story, albeit without words. Barrios's tone warms agreeably here, and he and Cormany traverse this landscape with imagination. Esa-Pekka Salonen's Nachtlieder returns to the concentration of Berg's Vier Stücke , although Salonen's idiom is friendlier and less abstract than Berg's. Most recent is the very worthwhile Sonata (1988) by Barcelona-born composer Salvador Brotons. The first movement is almost endlessly tuneful and tender, and the bipartite second movement is a misty Recitativo followed by a piquant and eventful Allegro ritmico .

In the lower registers Barrios has a wonderfully rich tone and he is an alert, sensitive player who knows how to make new audiences for his instrument, as well as for this repertory. Cormany, as ‘unabashed accompanist' for the present century, contributes as much musical intelligence to the programme as Barrios. Cormany's booklet notes have something to offer all levels of musical experience, although I wish they had been printed in a larger font. The recording was made in Tenerife – Barrios's birthplace. Occasionally it puts an aggressive edge on the clarinettist's sound but by and large is successful.
Raymond S. Tuttle

CLASSIC FM MAGAZINE:
This compilation of 20 th century music for clarinet and piano draws together works infused with melody, such as the Bernstein and Bax sonatas, with the atonal qualities of Alban Berg's work and its close associations with the so-called ‘Second Viennese School'. If you want an album to play while you're doing other things, you might skip the Berg tracks. But even if the mere mention of the word ‘atonal' makes you shudder, I would advise you to return to the Berg when you can give it your undivided attention. The piece by conductor/composer Esa-Pekka Salonen is also a work that demands close listening. Great playing!
John Brunning

MID WEST RECORD:
A nice recital for clarinet and piano, the material ranges from Bernstein to Berg and beyond.  These two pros are on top of their game and can make this basic instrumentation sound like a lot more.  One of the engaging points of this set is the material is well of left of warhorse repertoire giving the listener something sort of new as well as a new perspective.  Charming in its deceptive simplicity, the best cats always make it look easy.
Chris Spector

MUSICAL POINTERS:
A nice balanced programme to extend 20 C clarinettists' repertoire, without venturing too far into extended techniques etc.

Bax is typically romantic, Berg's aphorisms searching and forward looking, Bernstein and Honegger bring lighter relief, Salonen's '70s modernism rather faceless and disappointing. Barrios hails from Tenerife where the disc was recorded. The item by the local composer, Salvador Brotons, proves to be a welcome novelty.

If you can't read the first page of the notes * on our illustration, nor can I. Legibility improves with the following pages of Clinton Cormany's notes, printed black on white, but I still need a magnifying glass, which is counter-productive.

Who needs arts editors for CDs? On the back page it gets worse, with names of composers and for credits white on yellow... And don't artists themselves get to see how their far too all-inclusive CVs will look in multilingual booklets after it is decided how many pages are affordable?

All well played and recorded by Simon Fox.
Peter Grahame Woolf