Karin Rehnqvist’s acceptance speech after being awarded the Nordic Council’s Music Prize 2022 for the choral and orchestral work Silent Earth at the prize gala in Musikhuset, Helsinki, on 1 November.
- Astronomers calculate that there are 2000 billion galaxies in the universe.
That’s 2000 plus twelve zeros. There are a lot of them. - In our galaxy, the Milky Way, the planet Earth floats with us humans on it. Our life is fragile, we are here together and we must take better care of the Earth.
- That was the starting point when the writer Kerstin Perski and I met one evening
just over three years ago, to start a piece that would in some way talk about the climate crisis. - We ended up quite quickly in the fantasy, sitting on another planet and from there we saw our beautiful Earth in the distance. The question became: why are we on another planet? What does the earth look like and what has happened?
- It became the piece Silent Earth for choir and orchestra, where the choir represents all of humanity. Thanks to Kerstin, the poet, thanks to all the musicians in the Netherlands Radio Choir and Philharmonic, the Swedish Radio Choir and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra.
- And I also want to say thank you to all the other nominees for the very nice conversations. We continue to set the world to music.
The assessment committee’s justification can be found here ›
