Silent Earth<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIs it possible to present the climate crisis as a question of humanity’s destiny by means of a choir and symphony orchestra? No, but it can be powerful and thought-provoking piece of music and poem. In places with this oratory, especially in the portrayal of man’s destruction of his only planet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With weak, dry sounds, Rehnqvist opens his mourning play about a muted earth. A stubborn motif with single notes quivering in drills suggests that diversity has become silliness. The chorus complains homophonous in narrow intervals. There is no room for flourishing virtuosity here. Rehnqvist paints the final downfall with broad brushes and thick timbre. But it ends, like T S Eliot, not with a bang but with a whimper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2013 Camilla Lundberg in Dagens Nyheter<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nIf any Swedish composer could write a powerful musical manifesto for the environment, it is Karin Rehnqvist. The breakthrough more than thirty years ago with “Puks\u00e5nger – Lockrop” opened up as much for a completely unique tonal language as for the feminist voice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Two years late, the Swedish premiere of “Silent Earth” for choir and orchestra, a joint commission between the Dutch public service company NTR and the Swedish Radio Symphony, now came during the Baltic Sea Festival. The very choice to exclude vocal soloists in order to let the orchestra and choir be the components means that the negative side of the representative is more easily avoided: with three shorter poems by Kerstin Perski \u2013 Rehnqvist’s librettist in two operas \u2013 a community is created that the listener can join. We are mourning together a world that is being destroyed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rehnqvist’s musical impulses have been taken up by others and she herself has been receptive. The establishment of monotony, developed into neighbouring steps, once bore the stamp of idiosyncrasy but has been absorbed by others into minimalist strategies. It is not until the later parts of the work that the primal force that once broke the uniformity is found, but then seismic movements arise. Unfortunately, Perski’s texts are not printed in the text booklet, because it is difficult to distinguish the English text in the Radio choir’s voices – still a communicative conveyance of the feeling of the earth being ravaged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2013 Erik Wallrup in Svenska Dagbladet<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n“Silent earth” begins in a softly roaring atmosphere of gong and cymbals, where small scratching and glittering gestures make their mark. Soon a woodwind signal appears that sighs and drills on a semitone step, the archetype of melancholy and a central building block of the piece. A coordinated brass chord \u00e0 la Mahler with its rhythm foreshadows the choir’s effort in a desolate landscape: “Lonely earth \/ silent earth \/ seasons passing \/ winds howling \/ lakes glittering \/ emptied \/ fishless”. To this text, the music becomes a reflection of the gloomy state of the Baltic Sea around which the festival revolves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the second movement, the choir gives voice to the human collective mourning the devastating earth to fragments of a lamento bass (a descending bass line historically used to accompany lament). Kerstin Perski’s eco-poetry is straight to the point, without subtexts or surprises: “We are the ones who ignored your pains, let you suffer from our greed”. The suggestive power lies instead with the music, and Rehnqvist manages it well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2013 Axel Englund in Expressen<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nHere the people sing to the earth, after which a natural disaster in forte occurs. The work is both dramatic and romantic as if during the disaster we must not forget what once was. The text may be a bit environmentally and politically correct, but musically it is both evocative and exciting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2013 Claes Wahlin in Aftonbladet<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\nConcert photos: Gunilla Landstr\u00f6m<\/em>In early 2019, the idea of \u200b\u200ba musical piece was born that would portray the agony surrounding our planet’s fate: the all-too-clear, alarming <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2457,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p79arM-Dy","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4296,"url":"https:\/\/karin-rehnqvist.se\/eng\/autumn-2026\/","url_meta":{"origin":2452,"position":0},"title":"Autumn 2026","author":"Kulturpartikeln","date":"October 5, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"Upcoming performances during the autumn and winter.","rel":"","context":"In "Latest"","block_context":{"text":"Latest","link":"https:\/\/karin-rehnqvist.se\/eng\/category\/latest\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/karin-rehnqvist.se\/eng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/bakgr_abstr_kalendarium25namnteckn_2.jpg?fit=1200%2C643&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/karin-rehnqvist.se\/eng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/bakgr_abstr_kalendarium25namnteckn_2.jpg?fit=1200%2C643&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/karin-rehnqvist.se\/eng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/bakgr_abstr_kalendarium25namnteckn_2.jpg?fit=1200%2C643&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/karin-rehnqvist.se\/eng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/bakgr_abstr_kalendarium25namnteckn_2.jpg?fit=1200%2C643&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/karin-rehnqvist.se\/eng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/bakgr_abstr_kalendarium25namnteckn_2.jpg?fit=1200%2C643&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/karin-rehnqvist.se\/eng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/jorden_planeten_KRSilent-Earth_2.jpg?fit=1531%2C861&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/karin-rehnqvist.se\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/karin-rehnqvist.se\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/karin-rehnqvist.se\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karin-rehnqvist.se\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karin-rehnqvist.se\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2452"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/karin-rehnqvist.se\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2474,"href":"https:\/\/karin-rehnqvist.se\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2452\/revisions\/2474"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karin-rehnqvist.se\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/karin-rehnqvist.se\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karin-rehnqvist.se\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karin-rehnqvist.se\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}