About Beginning

for piano trio:

"In all, this is a bold, attractive and intriguing pice, written by a composer who knows exactly what she's saying and doesn't take a moment longer than necessary to say it.

Tamara Bernstein, National Post, Canada 2003

About Puksånger - lockrop

for two female singers and percussion:

"Puksånger - lockrop is sensational in every conceivable sense of the word, laudatory and critical; its message is unmistakable."

Elain Barkin, The Open space Magazine 2001

About Arktis Arktis!

for chamber orchestra:

"..the first part, Breaking the Ice, was full of tense, jagged music - the sound of cracking ice - contrasted with gleaming pillars of sound.

But in the second movement, Between Sky and Sea, Rehnqvist produced a piece of breathtaking beauty - almost childlike, expressive fragments of melody, at first tentative

and fragile, then, without losing their character, blossoming, briefly before a drifting away in a magical, weightless coda.

Michael Tumelty, The Herald 2000

About Sun Song

BIS CD 996 and Phono Suecia PSCD 85

Every so often a composer appears with music refreshingly other, as in the 1960s with Ligeti, Penderecki or Reich, and more recently Saariaho. Karin Rehnqvist (b. 1957) is another such, whose music requires one to discard preconceptions of what constitutes Western art music.

Here is music simultaneously radically new and very old. It could only have been written at the end of this century, but its well-springs lies in immemorial folk traditions unconnected to the concert hall. The singers in her extraordinary cycle Timpanum Songs – Herding Calls (1989) sing, whisper, keen, shriek, wail and grunt, to a text in places openly misogynist (feminist issues are an abiding concern of hers).

If it sounds on paper like avant-garderie gone mad, in performance the effect is controlled and compelling, like the product of some quite alien musical culture. Yet the extremeity of means lies largely in ancient rural Swedish traditions, such as kulning, used by women goat- and cowherds to call their flocks. My first encounter with this peice left me numbed for days.

The marvellous five-part cycle Sun Song (1994) is if anything more powerful, a hymn to the sun drawing mainly on the Icelandic poem Sólarljóth. Rehnqvist’s restraint and delicacy is evident from the cycle’s

Final song. ’Another day departs’, and the beautiful motet When you but walk on the ground (1995). These reissued performances (the Phono Suecia disc contains three orchestral pieces translating Rehnqvist’s manner into non-vocal media) are stunning, in exemplary BIS transfers. Rehnqvist’s music may seem discordant (though not on it own terms), alien at times uncomfortable, but is never less than absorbing. Love it or loathe it, you will not easily forget it. Very, very strongly recommmended.

Guy S Rickards from Gramophone, September 1999

About Solsången (Sun Song)

"Lastly comes the stunning CD of Karin Rehnqvist from which I am still in shock"

Guy Rickards, Gramophone, Critic's choice of the year 2000

About Puksånger - lockrop

"When I was in Frederic Rzweski's music class in Buffalo, he asked us, "If there is such a thing as women's msuic?" At that time I was reminded of the riddle, "Does a dog have a Buddha nature?", and the correct response: "Answer either way nd you lose your own Buddha nature" I thought it wiser (and safer) not to answer. In light of Karin Rehnqvist's music

I am no longer sure the question can be successfully evaded. -----

Puksånger - lockrop is so forceful, original and thought-provoking that I am both delighted and uneasy (the correct response?) Ms Rehnqvist's pieces are unquestionably among the most memorable and original in the festival.

Rodney Sharman about World Music Days, Stockholm 1994

About "When the Earth Sings" - a fairy tale for actress and chamber orchestra

It is exquisite, with ravishingly delicate music by Swedish composer Karin Rehnqvist painting atmospheres, and the musical colour of seasonal changes, with an unerring ear and a typically light touch. Rehnqvist who has long asociations with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, draws on her own folk tradition and her needle-sharp observation of contemporary sonic effects with effortless fluency.

Michael Tumelty, The Herald, November 5 2004