The long-awaited release: Karin Rehnqvist‘s acclaimed work Silent Earth is now available for download or streaming. It is a gripping climate oratorio in three movements for mixed choir and symphony orchestra, with lyrics by Kerstin Perski.
It was for this work that Karin Rehnqvist was awarded the Nordic Council Music Prize in autumn 2022.
The album Silent Earth was released on February 7, 2025, as a recording with the Swedish Radio Choir and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. This was from a concert during the Baltic Sea Festival in August 2022. The Finnish conductor Dima Slobeniouk led the 150 participants.
For downloading/streaming
The new album is produced by Footprint Records and distributed by Naxos.
Here is the link for downloading ›
including extensive documentation.
Read more in the album booklet
16 pages about the creation of the work, lyrics, programme note, and biographies of the composer and the lyricist, the choir, the orchestra and the conductor.
Free to download ›
– This masterpiece by Swedish composer Karin Rehnqvist is a dystopian retrospective of how humanity has plundered this one planet we live on.
Postponed premieres
Silent Earth was composed in 2020, but the planned premieres were postponed until 2022 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The world premiere took place in the concert series NTR ZaterdagMatinee, with the Groot Omroepkoor (Netherlands Radio Choir) and the Radio Filharmonisch Orkest (Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra) on January 29, 2022, with Dutch conductor Gijs Leenaars.
At the Baltic Sea Festival on August 26, 2022, Silent Earth was performed by the Radio Choir and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra in Berwaldhallen, Stockholm.
Silent Earth is a joint commission by the Eduard van Beinum Stichting, for the NTR ZaterdagMatinee, the concert series in Radio 4 in the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra for the Baltic Sea Festival in Berwaldhallen, Stockholm.
Photo: Arne Hyckenberg
