Karin Rehnqvist won the 2022 Nordic Council Music Prize for her work Silent Earth in Helsinki on Tuesday evening, November 1, 2022.
Silent Earth for mixed choir and symphony orchestra with lyrics by Kerstin Perski is ”a bewildering and powerfully encouraging work” which greatly impressed the adjudication committee.
With a masterful touch, Karin Rehnqvist expresses the unique capacity of music.
The winner of last year’s prize, Faroese artist Eivør Pálsdóttir, presented Karin Rehnqvist with the prize at an awards ceremony broadcast live from Helsinki’s Musikhuset.
A masterful touch
The full justification:
“Silent Earth” is a bewildering and powerfully encouraging work which greatly impressed the adjudication committee. With the climate catastrophe as its foundation, a central dramatic musical narrative for choir and orchestra emerges and leads the listener from ice into a fire with relentless force.
– In her work, Rehnqvist reveals her almost absolute mastery of the craft. With a masterful touch, she demonstrates the capacity of music to simultaneously define time and space, and provide an emotional experience, free for everyone to interpret. Through all that darkness, the creative force sprouts simultaneously and spreads the rumour that perhaps it may just be humankind’s only hope.”
The prize is awarded on alternate years to an ensemble or artist in one year and, as this year, to a work by a living composer.
The Nordic Council awards five prizes each year – for literature, film, music, the environment, and children’s and young people’s literature. The winners each receive DKK 300,000 along with the Nordlys statuette, which is presented at an awards ceremony in connection with the annual Session of the Nordic Council.
Photo: Magnus Fröderberg
