About
Truls Mørk's compelling performances, combining fierce intensity, integrity and grace, have established him as one of the pre-eminent cellists of our time.
He is a celebrated artist who performs with the most distinguished orchestras including the Orchestre de Paris, Berliner Philharmoniker, Wiener Philharmoniker, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Philharmonia, Münchner Philharmoniker, London Philharmonic Orchestra and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig. In North America he has appeared with the New York Philharmonic, The Philadelphia and Cleveland orchestras, Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Conductor collaborations include Myung-Whun Chung, Mariss Jansons, Manfred Honeck, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Gustavo Dudamel, Sir Simon Rattle, Kent Nagano, Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Christoph Eschenbach amongst others.
Truls Mørk continues to give regular recitals at major venues and festivals throughout the world. As part of the 2011 Bergen International Festival he performed the complete Beethoven Cello Sonatas over two evenings, together with the Variations for cello and piano - last presented at the Festival in this format by Jacqueline du Pré in 1970.
Truls Mørk is a great champion of contemporary music and has given in excess of 30 premieres. These include Rautavaara's Towards the Horizon with the BBC Symphony Orchestra/John Storgårds, Pavel Haas' Cello Concerto with the Wiener Philharmoniker/Jonathan Nott, Krzysztof Penderecki's Concerto for Three Cellos with the NHK Symphony Orchestra/Charles Dutoit and Haflidi Hallgrimsson's Cello Concerto, co-commissioned by the Oslo Philharmonic, Iceland Symphony and Scottish Chamber orchestras.
Truls Mørk has an impressive recording output and has recorded many of the great cello concertos for labels such as Virgin Classics, EMI, Deutsche Grammophon, Ondine, Arte Nova and Chandos many of which have won international awards including Gramophone, Grammy, Midem and ECHO Klassik. These include Dvorak Concerto (Mariss Jansons/Oslo Philharmonic); Britten Cello Symphony and Elgar Concerto (Sir Simon Rattle/CBSO); Miaskovsky Concerto and Prokofiev Sinfonia Concertante (Paavo Järvi/CBSO), Dutilleux (Myung-Whun Chung/Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France), CPE Bach (Bernard Labadie/Les Violons du Roy), Haydn Concertos (Iona Brown/Norwegian Chamber Orchestra), Rautavaara's Towards the Horizon (John Storgårds/Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra) as well as the complete Bach Cello Suites and the Britten Cello Suites. His most recent recordings include the Shostakovich Concertos with the Oslo Philharmonic/Vasily Petrenko and works for cello and orchestra by Massenet with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande/Neeme Järvi.
Initially taught by his father, Truls Mørk continued his studies with Frans Helmerson, Heinrich Schiff and Natalia Schakowskaya. In his early career he won a number of competitions such the Moscow Tchaikovsky Competition (1982), Cassado Cello Competition in Florence (1983), the Unesco Prize at the European Radio-Union competition in Bratislava (1983) and the Naumberg Competition in New York (1986).