Norway's Trondheim Soloists have gained both critical acclaim and popular success with recordings and concerts that offer imaginative programming ideas and a distinctive instrumental sound. It has become recognized as one of the world's top draws in the field of chamber music.
The Trondheim Soloists, also known by its Norwegian name of TrondheimSolistene, had modest origins: the group was founded in 1988 as an apprentice ensemble for string players at the music conservatory of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in the northern city of Trondheim. The players quickly developed a rapport and were greeted with rapturous applause in London during an inaugural tour and decided to transform the ensemble into a professional enterprise. The Trondheim Soloists issued its first album, a set of works by Edvard Grieg, in 1992.
With its unusual sound -- warm, gutsy, and bright -- generated in part by the combination of Baroque bows and metal strings, the group attracted the attention of high-profile soloists, including violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter and pianist Leif Ove Andsnes. With Mutter, it recorded a popular version of Vivaldi's Four Seasons violin concertos in 1999 and made its Carnegie Hall debut two years later. In 2002, cellist Øyvind Gimse was appointed the Trondheim Soloists' artistic director, and a new direction in the group's evolution began. A pause of several years followed in its recording activity.
Gimse honed the group's sound and pushed it toward repertory experiments. In both these aspects, the group fit the agenda of the Norwegian label 2L, a frequent presence in U.S. Grammy nomination rolls for releases that combine program, venue, and engineering convincingly. The group explored the relationship between folk and classical traditions in Norway on In Folk Style (2010), recorded with Norwegian band musicians, and continued to deliver razor-sharp recordings of string repertoire, as on Reflections (2016), which featured music by Bridge and Stravinsky and garnered multiple Grammy nominations. That was one of two Trondheim Soloists releases to make use of Blu-Ray technology on an audio-only disc; the Blu-Ray versions were packaged with ordinary Super Audio CDs. Reflections was recorded for the Naxos label, and the Trondheim Soloists recorded an album of contemporary works for accordion on the ECM label before moving to Decca for the 2017 album Nordic Noir. The group returned to 2L for the 2019 album Lux, an album of contemporary works. In 2022, the Trondheim Soloists joined violinist and Hardanger fiddle player Ragnhild Hemsing for a recording of Grieg's Peer Gynt, Op. 23, in an adapted version featuring solo parts for those two instruments. ~ James Manheim, Rovi
