The Cleveland Orchestra
Under the leadership of Music Director Franz Welser-Möst, The Cleveland Orchestra has become one of the most sought-after performing ensembles in the world. In concerts at its winter home at Severance Hall and at each summer’s Blossom Festival, in residencies from Miami to Vienna, and on tour around the world, The Cleveland Orchestra sets standards of artistic excellence, creative programming, and community engagement.
The partnership with Franz Welser-Möst, now in its ninth season, has earned The Cleveland Orchestra unprecedented residencies in the United States and around the world, including one at the Musikverein in Vienna, the first of its kind by an American orchestra. This past fall, the orchestra toured to Asia and performed a residency at Tokyo’s famed Suntory Hall. The orchestra regularly appears at European festivals, including an ongoing series of biennial residencies at the Lucerne Festival (featuring Roche Commissions, a project involving the orchestra, the festival, and Carnegie Hall). In the US, Mr. Welser-Möst and the orchestra have toured from coast to coast, including regular appearances at Carnegie Hall, and in January 2007 began an unprecedented long-term residency project in Miami, Florida, where they perform annually at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County and provide a wide array of community and educational activities. This coming summer, the orchestra begins an ongoing residency at New York’s Lincoln Center Festival.
The Cleveland Orchestra has a long and distinguished recording and broadcast history. A series of DVD and CD recordings under the direction of Franz Welser-Möst has recently been added to an extensive and widely praised catalog of audio recordings made during the tenures of the ensemble’s former music directors. In addition, Cleveland Orchestra concerts are heard in syndication each season on radio stations throughout North America and Europe.
The Cleveland Orchestra was founded in 1918 by a group of local citizens intent on creating an ensemble worthy of joining America’s top rank of symphony orchestras. Over the ensuing decades, the orchestra grew from a fine regional organization to one of the most admired symphonic ensembles in the world. Seven music directors—Nikolai Sokoloff (1918–1933), Artur Rodzinski (1933–1943), Erich Leinsdorf (1943–1946), George Szell (1946–1970), Lorin Maazel (1972–1982), Christoph von Dohnányi (1984–2002), and, since 2002, Franz Welser-Möst—have guided and shaped the ensemble’s growth and sound. Touring performances throughout the US and, beginning in 1957, to Europe and across the globe have confirmed Cleveland’s place among the world’s top orchestras. Year-round performances became a reality with the first Blossom Festival in 1968, presented at an award-winning, purpose-built outdoor facility located just south of the Cleveland metropolitan area near Akron, Ohio. Touring, residencies, radio broadcasts, and recordings available by internet download and on DVD and CD provide further access to the orchestra’s music making to a broad and loyal constituency around the world.
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Franz Welser-Möst
The 2010–2011 season marks Franz Welser-Möst’s ninth year as Music Director of The Cleveland Orchestra. He holds the Kelvin Smith Family Endowed Chair as Music Director. Mr. Welser-Möst’s long-term commitment extends to the orchestra’s centennial in 2018.
Under Mr. Welser-Möst’s leadership, The Cleveland Orchestra holds an annual Miami Residency that includes three weeks of subscription concerts, and more than a dozen partnerships with Miami-Dade organizations and educational institutions. In addition, the orchestra has ongoing residencies at Vienna’s famed Musikverein and Switzerland’s Lucerne Festival. During the 2010–2011 season, the orchestra adds residencies at Indiana University and in Japan, and launches a biennial residency at New York’s Lincoln Center Festival that features The Cleveland Orchestra in concert and, in future years, in Vienna State Opera productions.
Under Mr. Welser-Möst, The Cleveland Orchestra has presented 11 world and 15 US premieres. During the 2010–2011 season, they are presenting a fully staged Zurich Opera production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni at Severance Hall in Cleveland, following performances of Le nozze di Figaro in 2009 and Così fan tutte in 2010.
Mr. Welser-Möst became General Music Director of the Vienna State Opera in September 2010, serving concurrently with his Cleveland post. At the start of 2011, he conducted the Vienna Philharmonic’s celebrated New Year’s Concert, the most widely watched classical music event on television; the performance is available to download and on CD and DVD. In June 2010, he directed Vienna’s internationally televised Sommernachtskonzert at Schönbrunn Palace.
Mr. Welser-Möst first appeared at the Salzburg Festival in 1985, made his American debut in 1989, and served as music director of the London Philharmonic from 1990 to 1996. Across a decade-long tenure with the Zurich Opera, culminating in three seasons as general music director (2005–2008), he led the company in more than 40 new productions and numerous revivals.
Mr. Welser-Möst’s recordings and videos have won international awards and two Grammy nominations, and he has led The Cleveland Orchestra in video recordings of live performances of Bruckner’s symphonies nos. 5, 7, 8, and 9. Their recordings together include Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder with soprano Measha Brueggergosman in 2010 and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in 2007, both for Deutsche Grammophon.
Franz Welser-Möst has been recognized by the Western Law Center for Disability Rights, and is an honorary member of the Vienna Singverein. Musical America named him Conductor of the Year in 2003. He is the co-author of Cadences: Observations and Conversations, published in a German edition in 2007.
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