Mork, Truls / Thibaudet, J.Y.

Truls Mørk has delivered some memorable performances as a featured soloist with symphony orchestras throughout Europe and North America. His interpretations of works by such composers as Dimitri Shostakovich, Antonin Dvorák, and Benjamin Britten have often prompted critics to use the term "electrifying" to describe his talent with the rather unwieldy string instrument. Hailed as a "significant new presence on the music scene, especially in Europe" by Pittsburgh Post-Gazettewriter Andrew Druckenbrod, Mørk won his first Grammy Award in 2001 for his recording of a Britten cello concerto. Mørk was born in 1961 in Bergen, Norway's second largest city. Although his father was a professional cellist, Mørk's formal musical training began with the piano, his mother's instrument, at the age of seven. He failed to develop a passion for it, and his parents began to think that he should try a stringed instrument instead. His father preferred that he study the violin with a certain teacher, but the man had a busy schedule, and so in the interim his father began to teach his son the rudiments of cello. Already eleven years old, Mørk was a latecomer among those who hoped for a professional career, but his enthusiasm was immediate. "I liked the look of the cello because it was big," he said in an interview with Seattle Post-Intelligencer contributor R. M. Campbell, and noted that "the sound of the instrument was already in my ear." Some of the first pieces he attempted to play through to finish were ambitious standards--J. S. Bach's "First Suite" and Johannes Brahms's "E Minor Sonata"--considering he could barely play a scale correctly with his bow. Still, he was inspired by his father, as he told Campbell. "I knew how they were supposed to sound.... My father had a very lyrical sound and played beautifully. I wanted to play the same way." Mørk's first teacher realized his student's promise, if not yet talent, as he progressed in ability. The teacher confessed to him that most cello students were diffident, but he was the exception. "I played in an exaggerated style, over the top," the musician told Campbell. "I had to work to find not just strong colors but those in between." His father remained noncommittal. "He never really asked me to play for him or pushed me to practice. It was always the other way around," he told Cincinnati Enquirer journalist Janelle Gelfand. "I had to go to him and ask, please, could he give me a lesson." He also realized that he was likely destined for solo career at early age, rather than as a member of an orchestra. After auditioning and winning a cello seat in a youth orchestra in Norway, "after one week I was put in the back of the group because I was playing too loud and I didn't count properly," he joked with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Druckenbrod. Mørk studied with Frans Helmerson after 1978. From Helmerson Mørk learned how to interpret different pieces from various eras, as Helmerson instilled in his students an appreciation for how music from different periods was played. Mørk also studied under Russian teacher Natalia Schakowskaya, who once studied under Mstislav Rostropovich, considered the twentieth century's greatest cellist. In contrast, Schakowskaya was a rigorous, demanding teacher who emphasized technique above all else.