"[Ryan is] attracted by the perceptual paradox of music that runs into harmonic stasis while maintaining a lot of rhythmic vigour. There's a tendency throughout the piece for the music to fall into what pop musicians call a groove, even after Ryan sets up something that would seem to ensure forward motion, such as the viola's folk-dance riff in the second movement, or the brief four-instrument canon in the third. Like the quiet, glimmering tutti chords of the finale, these episodes nudge you toward wondering what, after all, movement in music really is."

Robert Everett-Green, Globe and Mail

"This is a work that deserves to be heard again."

John Terauds, Toronto Star