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PSO on Tour: Cellist Mork, Jansons say they work well together
Thursday, May 25, 2000 By Andrew Druckenbrod, Post-Gazette Classical Music Writer
Plays well with others.
Norwegian cellist Truls Mork may do so now, and on the greatest stages in the world. But it wasn't always that way.
"I tried to be in a [youth] orchestra when I was really young, like 15, 16 years old," he says. "I did a good audition, but 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 laughs. "That's when I realized I would probably have to be a soloist."
Well, things could be worse.
Mork, 39, has since emerged as a significant new presence on the music scene, especially in Europe. "He is now one of the most requested cellists," says 042299More details in tomorrow's Post-Gazette.Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra Music Director Mariss Jansons. "He has charisma on the stage." Tomorrow he joins the PSO in Amsterdam to perform Shostakovich's Cello Concerto No. 1. It will be the only program change throughout the entire European tour, and Mork will perform the work in only one concert.
Jansons met Mork at the 1982 International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow when the then-unknown cellist was a competitor. "Because he was from Norway, I felt some kind of thing because I had worked for Oslo [Philharmonic Orchestra]," says Jansons enthusiastically. "He came with only one [pair of] trousers and white shirt. He didn't know that he would be in the final."
The two have been connected ever since, performing together on several occasions. When Jansons took the Oslo Philharmonic on an American tour in 1994, Mork was the featured soloist. "I feel like his godfather," says Jansons. Mork concurs: "I have a very special relation to Jansons. He has been to me a very important musical influence."
Indeed, they have a closer working relationship than most visiting soloists do with music directors. Once, Mork was asked to send all his bowings to Jansons almost half a year before a performance. "[Jansons is] a person that likes very much to be in control, but in his concerts I think he's very inspiring and free in some way and lets you go," says Mork. "[It's] important to have that ability to let things happen."
The Shostakovich concerto in particular is a work that needs a good deal of preparation to allow the soloist to interpret it freely in concert. The Russian composer, who died in 1975, has been the subject of controversy for decades about whether or not he surreptitiously criticized the Soviet government through his music. Many of his pieces, including the cello concerto, can be interpreted as being either for or against the state, depending on what musical elements you focus on.
A soloist is probably best served by choosing one or the other interpretation ahead of time. But the outer movements' ominous and obsessive disposition seems to point toward some type of subversive behavior. And, in the finale, there is a quote of Stalin's favorite song, "Suliko," treated disrespectfully by the composer, to say the least.
Any contemporary interpretation, however, might not be the one that Shostakovich originally intended. Mork feels that the piece has so many layers that it is rewarding regardless of the composer's design. "I think it was connected to a certain society at a certain time, but I think it is just very good music," he says. Having said that, Mork says he'll take an approach that sees the composer as a cynic. "I am playing it in a more desperate [way]."
Mork has already created his own space with the cello concerto: His recording of it received a Grammy nomination. But he still feels the weight of the work's dedicatee, the great cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. A musician of prodigious talent, Rostropovich learned the entire part in four days.
"That's depressing," Mork says, chuckling in self-deprecating fashion. "I don't want to hear about that!" But the Russian cellist's daunting talent is an inspiration to Mork, one of the things that pushes him to pursue the highest level of interpretation. "Rostropovich was my big hero for so many years. He still is a great hero."
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