Press Center

Music Director Franz Welser-Möst leads The Cleveland Orchestra and celebrated soloists in two concerts on consecutive nights, Wednesday, May 23 and Thursday, May 24, both at 8:00 p.m. in Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage.

In the first program, pianist Yefim Bronfman joins Maestro Welser-Möst and the orchestra, playing Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat Major. The concert is also the culminating performance of Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho’s season-long residency as holder of the 2011–2012 Richard and Barbara Debs Composer’s Chair at Carnegie Hall, featuring the New York premiere of her work, Laterna Magica, which was inspired by the memoirs of film director Ingmar Bergman. The program concludes with Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 6 in B Minor.

The following night, Maestro Welser-Möst conducts a concert performance of Richard Strauss’s monumental opera, Salome, with a distinguished cast led by Swedish soprano Nina Stemme in the title role. Featured soloists include bass-baritone Eric Owens (Jochanaan), tenor Rudolf Schasching (Herod), mezzo-soprano Jane Henschel (Herodias), tenor Garrett Sorenson (Narraboth), tenor Brian Keith Johnson (Second Nazarene), and mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano (Page).

The May 23 concert will be broadcast live on WQXR (105.9 FM) and streamed on wqxr.org as part of the Carnegie Hall Live series. Broadcasts can also be heard on radio stations across the country, courtesy of American Public Media.

Next season, The Cleveland Orchestra and Franz Welser-Möst return to Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage on Tuesday, November 13 at 8:00 p.m. for their only Carnegie Hall performance of the 2012–2013 season, performing Beethoven’s Symphony No. 4 and Grosse Fuge, Scriabin’s The Poem of Ecstasy, and the New York premiere of Matthias Pintscher’s Chute d’Étoiles for Two Trumpets and Orchestra.


Artist Information
Franz Welser-Möst began his tenure as Music Director of The Cleveland Orchestra in 2002. Under his direction, the orchestra is presented in a series of ongoing residencies in the United States and Europe, continues its historic championship of new composers through commissions and premieres, and has re-established itself as an important operatic ensemble. Artistic highlights of Franz Welser-Möst’s tenure as Music Director in Cleveland include thirteen world and fifteen United States premieres. Through the Roche Commissions project, he and the Orchestra have premiered works by Harrison Birtwistle, Chen Yi, Hanspeter Kyburz, George Benjamin, and Toshio Hosokawa in partnership with the Lucerne Festival and Carnegie Hall.

Mr. Welser-Möst has led opera performances each season during his tenure in Cleveland. Following six opera-in-concert presentations, he brought fully staged opera back to Severance Hall, leading Zurich Opera productions of the three Mozart/Da Ponte operas across three seasons: The Marriage of Figaro in March 2009, Così fan tutte in 2010, and Don Giovanni in 2011. Concurrently with his post in Cleveland, Mr. Welser-Möst became General Music Director of the Vienna State Opera at the start of the 2010–2011 season, leading performances of Puccini’s La bohème and a production of Wagner’s Tannhäuser that he premiered last season. He also maintains an ongoing relationship with the Vienna Philharmonic.

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 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. The Cleveland Orchestra was founded in 1918 by a group of local citizens and since 1921 their educational programs have introduced nearly four million Cleveland-area schoolchildren to symphonic music. The orchestra has been led by seven music directors (Nikolai Sokoloff, Artur Rodzinski, Erich Leinsdorf, George Szell, Lorin Maazel, Christoph von Dohnányi, and Franz Welser-Möst), and one musical advisor (Pierre Boulez).


Bank of America is the Proud Season Sponsor of Carnegie Hall. # # #