Truls Mørk

“Mørk enthralled the audience from the first to last note. By turns tender, introverted, fiery and passionate, he constantly propelled us forward on this compelling epic journey.”
(Joanne Talbot, The Strad)

Truls Mørk’s compelling performances, combining fierce intensity, integrity and grace, have established him as one of the pre-eminent cellists of our time.

Truls Mørk is a celebrated artist who performs with the most distinguished orchestras including Orchestre de Paris, Berliner Philharmoniker, Wiener Philharmoniker, Concertgebouworkest, Münchner Philharmoniker, Philharmonia and London Philharmonic orchestras, and Gewandhausorchester Leipzig. In North America he has appeared with New York Philharmonic, The Philadelphia and The Cleveland orchestras, Boston Symphony Orchestra and Los Angeles Philharmonic. Conductor collaborations include Esa-Pekka Salonen, David Zinman, Manfred Honeck, Gustavo Dudamel, Sir Simon Rattle, Kent Nagano, Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Christoph Eschenbach, amongst others.

The 2024/25 season sees Truls Mørk return to Rotterdam, London and Bergen Philharmonic Orchestras, RAI Turin, Orchestre Phiharmonique de Radio France and ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra.

A great champion of contemporary music, Truls Mørk has given in excess of 30 premieres. He has also given highly successful performances of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Cello Concerto, conducted by the composer at the Royal Festival Hall, Lincoln Center and Festival d’Aix en Provence. In collaboration with Klaus Mäkelä, he performed the Salonen Cello Concerto with Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra. Other commissions include Victoria Borisova-Ollas’ cello concerto Oh Giselle, Remember Me, Rautavaara’s Towards the Horizon with BBC Symphony Orchestra and John Storgårds, Pavel Haas’ Cello Concerto with Wiener Philharmoniker and Jonathan Nott, Krzysztof Penderecki’s Concerto for Three Cellos with NHK Symphony Orchestra and Charles Dutoit, Hafliði Hallgrímsson’s Cello Concerto, co-commissioned by Oslo Philharmonic, Iceland Symphony and Scottish Chamber orchestras.

With an impressive recording output, Truls Mørk 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 awards. These include Dvořák’s Concerto (Mariss Jansons/Oslo Philharmonic), Britten’s Cello Symphony and Elgar’s Concerto (Sir Simon Rattle/CBSO), Miaskovsky’s Concerto and Prokofiev’s Sinfonia Concertante (Paavo Järvi/CBSO), Dutilleux (Myung-Whun Chung/Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France), CPE Bach (Bernard Labadie/Les Violons du Roy), Haydn’s 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 Britten Cello Suites. Later recordings include Shostakovich’s Concertos with Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra/Vasily Petrenko, works for cello and orchestra by Massenet with Orchestre de la Suisse Romande/Neeme Järvi and the Saint-Saëns Concertos together with Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra/Neeme Järvi. His most recent recording features the sonatas by Bridge, Britten and Debussy performed with Håvard Gimse and released on Alpha Classics.

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 as 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).

Gallery

Truls Mørk - Elgar: Cello Concerto (excerpt) with Gürzenich-Orchester Köln, conducted by James Gaffigan © Gürzenich-Orchester Köln

Truls Mørk - Dvořák: Cello Concerto (excerpt) with Oslo Philharmonic & Vasily Petrenko © Mezzo TV

Truls Mørk - Schumann: Cello Concerto (excerpt) with Orchestre symphonique de Montréal & Kent Nagano © Medici TV

Truls Mørk - Bach: Suite No.2 in D minor BWV 1008 Sarabande (excerpt) © Gürzenich-Orchester Köln

Truls Mørk - Haydn: Cello Concerto No.1 Mvt.2 (excerpt), conducted by Mariss Jansons © Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra

Truls Mørk - Haydn: Cello Concerto No.1 Mvt.3 (excerpt), conducted by Mariss Jansons © Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra

Truls Mørk - Bach: Cello Suites (excerpt) © Virgin Classics

“Truls Mørk delivered a remarkably poised and poetic account of Elgar’s Cello Concerto… Mørk’s highly distinct, lean and perfectly luminous tone suited the composition’s bittersweet lyricism as he sank deeply into the often-reflective score and brought detail to each phrase.”

(Susan Stempleski, Classical Source, October 2019)

“Equally evocative was Truls Mork’s performance of Elgar’s Cello Concerto, played with the richest mahogany tone, and shot through with wistful melancholy, even in the busy finale.”

(Simon Thompson, The Times, June 2019)

“The performance that will stay longest in my mind, though, was of the Elgar concerto, with the Norwegian cellist Truls Mørk. No player at the festival produced a handsomer tone: Mørk had the benefit of a magnificent instrument, a 1723 Domenico Montagnana, and he made it sing with unforced splendor, his expansive, Russian-inflected bowing and vibrato insuring that quiet passages floated into the far reaches of the hall. As an interpreter, Mørk avoided the noble-minded protocol — the high-school-graduation tread — that is too common in Elgar. Unmannered rubato gave a sense of moment-to-moment improvisation, of a halting search for honest expression. What emerged was a monologue set against a landscape of shadows: the cellist as Shakespearean actor, uneasy with the crown of power.”

(New Yorker, June 2016)

“In Schumann’s Cello Concerto the Norwegian Truls Mørk provided playing that was emotionally rapt and technically assured… Mørk’s absorbed dedication made it into a meditation alternately serene and dramatic, a reverie whose moods hung together”

(Martin Hoyle, Financial Times review, August 2014).

“Truls Mørk shows an infinite amount of musicianship… the Norweigian cellist develops a round and velvety rough sound, time and time again. A great artist at work, getting to the heart of the Brahms discourse.”

(Julian Sykes, Le Temps, March 2014)

“Truls Mørk has tremendous stature as a recitalist. Technical control is one thing, but the compelling quality throughout this programme was the intense personal conviction both he and Christian Ihle Hadland conveyed… Mørk enthralled the audience from the first to last note. By turns tender, introverted, fiery and passionate, he constantly propelled us forward on this compelling epic journey.”

(Joanne Talbot, The Strad, September 2013)