Rehnqvist: On A Distant Shore / Beginning / Arktis Arktis! / I Himmelen

Featuring

Petter Sundkvist
Martin Fröst
Malin Broman
Jesper Svedberg
Simon Crawford-Phillips
John Storgårds

Bo Johansson
Svenska Kammarorkestern
Kungsbacka Piano Trio
Adolf Fredriks Flickkör
Karin Rehnqvist

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Composition History

The orchestral work Arktis Arktis! was inspired by Karin Rehnqvist's experience accompanying a Swedish polar expedition to northern Canada in 1999, where she lived on an icebreaker for a month.

Compositional Technique

Rehnqvist's early success, Davids nimm, was based on a Swedish folk-song transcribed backwards and required trained folk singers who could produce a piercing, vibrato-free sound derived from kulning, a traditional herding technique.

Composer's Artistic Vision

For her clarinet concerto On a Distant Shore, Rehnqvist aimed to avoid traditional three-movement structures and instead used shorter movements to showcase the clarinet's timbral qualities and ability to produce micro-intervals.

Composition History

The piano trio Beginning was a collaborative commission by the Royal Philharmonic Society and the BBC for the Kungsbacka Piano Trio, premiering in London in 2003.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Instead of adapting folk melodies into classical styles, Rehnqvist innovatively started from the timbral and expressive power of vocal techniques like kulning and from topics found in original folk poetry, such as gender issues.

Composer Biography

Karin Rehnqvist's musical background combines modernist art music and folk music traditions, leading one critic to describe her music as 'simultaneously radically new and very old'.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Rehnqvist also conceived the clarinet concerto On a Distant Shore as a metaphorical representation of society, exploring the individual's relationship with the collective.