In 1990 Kriikku and Karttunen decided to create – in one fell swoop – a repertoire for clarinet-and-cello duo where none had previously existed. They canvassed as many Finnish composers as they could to furnish works on the promise of a premiere and a recording. The premieres mostly took place at the Warsaw and Helsinki festivals that year, but the recordings, made between 1992 and 2005, took longer. The works’ range of styles – all within a broadly modernist camp – and expression is wide, from quiet atmospheric miniatures (Kortekangas, Saariaho) to exuberant tone pictures such as Steamboat Bill Junior (named after the Keaton film) by last year’s Gramophone Contemporary Award-winner, Magnus Lindberg, and Hakola’s pluralistic Capriole. Others are more overtly study-like, such as Meriläinen’s Unes or Erkki Jokinen’s Pros, which latter mutates through several idiomatic vistas along its individualistic way.

The largest work, the three-movement Karanssi by Erik Bergman, is the most advanced in instrumental demands, requiring the clarinet to growl and bray throughout as well as use the bass instrument (used also in the pieces by Saariaho, Hakola and the title-track by Länsiö) in the central span. Subtlest of all, though, is Heininen’s Short I, designed to be played as a solo for either instrument or together as a duet as if telling “the same story in two different languages.” The performances are excellent, as one would expect, as is Ondine’s sound. One for the adventurous-minded.