Timbre is what makes a clarinet sound different from an oboe, and what makes one person's voice sound different from another person.

Tale Ognenovski is a master of interpretative clarinet sounds and inventor of exotic musical phrases.

The Emerson String Quartet and David Shifrin find an ideal melding of the ultrasmooth clarinet sound and the pulsing expressivity of the strings.

Compare a few of the materials shared by both composers: the warm and loving clarinet sound that infuses Mahler's orchestration against the shrill wheeze of Shostakovich's instrument forced upward and out of its skin.

Along the way, there was much to savor in purely sonic terms: especially ear-catching were the almost Baroque oboe timbre in the Adagio, the peculiarly constricted, woody clarinet sound in the Scherzo, and the magnificent brass textures throughout.

At a fast tempo, the sensual sound of a clarinet vanishes; Mr. DeFranco's clarinet sound disappeared beneath the shimmering of the cymbals, as well.

Suddenly the mellow clarinet sounds of a perfectly rendered "Danny Boy" enveloped the bus.

The dolorous clarinet sound plus the bite of the piano made nice metaphors for Poulenc's ambiguous style: bright impertinence with underlayers of melancholy tearoom tackiness.

Interestingly, he responded to this foreign clarinet sound by changing his song ever so slightly.

Paquito D'Rivera gave off a lovely clarinet sound, even and strong and soft, on his "I Remember Dizzy," a tune shifting between Latin rhythm and four-four swing.