Torleif Thedéen

Torleif Thedéen is a prominent cellist who has performed both concertos and chamber music with top artists and ensembles from Scandinavia and beyond. He is also a noted educator.

Thedéen was born in Sweden in 1962. His career got a powerful jump start when he won three of the most prestigious cello competitions, in a single year, 1985: the Hammer-Rostropowitsch, the Pablo Casals, and the European Broadcasting Union's International Tribune. That led, immediately and unusually, to a contract with <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22BIS%22">BIS</a>, for which he released the album The Russian Cello in 1986. Soon, Thedéen was appearing with major Scandinavian orchestras and conductors, including <a href="spotify:artist:3TRLbu1HiKgouyapoZE421">Paavo Berglund</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:1AZTVGOm7t5zkOcweZBivz">Leif Segerstam</a>, and the fast-rising <a href="spotify:artist:3ilNZUdmNZ2nUcuAOIpsQl">Esa-Pekka Salonen</a>. His 1994 <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22BIS%22">BIS</a> album featuring the Shostakovich cello concertos, with the <a href="spotify:artist:24TyvSlEEO55MTNEJo5VFc">Malmö Symphony Orchestra</a> under <a href="spotify:artist:6dg4xqm9InvCIZwVil23Yg">James DePreist</a>, won a Cannes Classical Award in 1995, and his 1999 set of Bach's cello suites was also highly regarded. His solo appearances branched out beyond Scandinavia to include concerto performances with the <a href="spotify:artist:2os8ZaeBvYxyVgTKrHtnvK">BBC</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:5EzQdU1LSOQszQFjsYt1E0">Moscow</a>, and <a href="spotify:artist:35NnUEPKGspM23lTZvK3cb">Czech</a> Philharmonic Orchestras. Thedéen made back-to-back tours of New Zealand and Australia in 2014-2015 and 2015-2016. He has been a fixture at European festivals including the Verbier Festival, the Prague Spring Festival, and the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival. A notable feature of the later part of Thedéen's career has been his touring and recording work with other top-quality soloists. He toured and recorded with violinist <a href="spotify:artist:00hfOKuZEhvKKNXmVdb1We">Janine Jansen</a> and violist <a href="spotify:artist:5Hw9w9OsYqdFSbTXdCgMo6">Maxim Rysanov</a> in the late 2000s. In 2018, he won the Edison Prize for a recording of the Messiaen Quartet for the End of Time with <a href="spotify:artist:00hfOKuZEhvKKNXmVdb1We">Jansen</a>, clarinetist <a href="spotify:artist:3HmzM7c3S5iM1jBG3gl0FF">Martin Fröst</a>, and pianist <a href="spotify:artist:3gGFrz3hjzLPTKFwjzfm3n">Lucas Debargue</a>. For his solo recordings, Thedéen moved from <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22BIS%22">BIS</a> to the <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22CPO%22">CPO</a> label, where in 2019 he issued a performance of Aram Khachaturian's Cello Concerto with the Staatsorchester Rheinische Philharmonie under <a href="spotify:artist:1lSZs0Q7lOGujWeSizY37A">Daniel Raiskin</a>.

Thedéen taught at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Copenhagen from 1992 to 1996. Since 1996, he has been a professor at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Stockholm.