Making A Fine Name For Himself -- Norwegian Cellist Truls Mork Is A Rising Star

----------------------------------------------------------------- Mork in Seattle

Truls Mork, cellist, will appear as soloist with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra tomorrow and Tuesday in the Opera House, with Gerard Schwarz conducting ($10-$45; 215-4747). Most of the program (but not the cello concerto) will be featured in a 3 p.m. "Musically Speaking" concert today, preceded by a 2 p.m. recital (free to ticketholders) with the young cellist Clara Lee and pianist Hannah Shields. -----------------------------------------------------------------

The first time he appeared in Seattle, local music fans were asking themselves, "What's a `Truls Mork'?"

That was back in 1994, when the Norwegian cellist was almost unknown in these parts - except for a handful of brilliant recordings on the Virgin Classics label.

Then Mork came to play with the International Music Festival of Seattle, at the invitation of festival director Dmitry Sitkovetsky, who had spotted him in Europe. When Mork played a Haydn cello concerto with the New European Strings at the Seattle festival, the audience stood up and shrieked and shouted.

When you get a screaming, stomping ovation for Haydn, which is not exactly one of the showoff composers of the repertoire, you know something electric is happening. Review after review of other Mork performances cite the same kind of electricity, which seems to result whenever Mork places his bow on his 1723 Montagnana cello.

The past three years have seen such an acceleration in the cellist's career that it has been impossible for the International Music Festival of Seattle to re-engage him, during the short (two-week) window of opportunity while the festival is running each June. Mork's 1994 engagement here, however, struck a responsive chord with Seattle Symphony Orchestra music director Gerard Schwarz, who immediately moved to book him - though it has taken two seasons to get him to the Seattle Opera House, where Mork performs with Schwarz and the orchestra tomorrow and Tuesday. The concerto will be the Shostakovich No. 1, a work Mork recorded on a disc that was nominated this year for a Grammy.

The line that leads a concert artist from city to city is not always a clear one. Mork almost certainly wouldn't be in Seattle now if it weren't for Sitkovetsky, who heard the cellist in Europe in the mid-1980s (after he had become the first Scandinavian to become a finalist and prize-winner at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow) and then invited him to the Korsholm Festival in Sweden.

"I really don't know why he invited me," the modest Mork said last Tuesday in a telephone call to Hannover, where he had a stop on his current concert tour. "We played together at his Korsholm Festival, which I enjoyed very much."

If it hadn't been Sitkovetsky who discovered Mork for Seattle, it certainly would have been Schwarz, who recently conducted the cellist in a performance of the Dvorak Concerto with the Czech Philharmonic in Prague.

"I have wonderful memories of this concert," Mork says. "To be in Prague, with those musicians who know this music so deeply and in such a special way, and with a very good partnership with the conductor - it was very inspiring."

Last Tuesday was a memorable day for Mork; his wife, Karin, gave birth to the couple's second child, a boy. It tells you a lot about the pluses and minuses of a successful musician's life when you realize that Mork won't be able to get home for 10 more days, and then will only have two days off before heading for a four-day engagement in Paris.

"This makes it a lot more difficult to go on tour," says Mork, in the immaculate English that seems to be second nature for his generation of Scandinavians (he was born in Bergen in 1961).

"Especially when you consider that I am touring for 250 days a year. My wife is a dancer at the National Ballet in Norway, and when she is working, she works harder than anyone. As you can imagine, our life can be very challenging."

But is it better than not playing any concerts and staying home all the time? Mork's answer is an emphatic yes.

"For me," says the soft-spoken cellist, "music is something so important that it is difficult to imagine life without it. It is necessary to me. It takes so much of my imagination and my concentration. It expresses so much emotion that I could not express any other way."

Mork's career path has expanded in this country since he signed with New York's IMG management firm three years ago, and now he'll play with the orchestras of Cleveland, Philadelphia, New York and Minnesota as well as Seattle this season. Among the recording projects on the hopper, also from Virgin Classics (with whom Mork is negotiating another two-year contract), are a recording of the Elgar Concerto (with Simon Rattle), the Dutilleux Concerto, and solo cello suites, sonatas and other works of Britten and Kodaly.

One thing seems certain: around the world, few music lovers will have to wonder what a "Truls Mork" is. Which leads to the intriguing question: what name have Mork and his wife chosen for the new baby?

"That is a very good question!" he responds.

"When our first baby was born two years ago, we delayed finding a name for so long that we received a notice from the police. You have to choose a name within a certain time period; otherwise they will do it for you. Now, we have a new name decision to make."