Source: welsermoest.com
For 23 years, Franz Welser-Möst has shaped an unmistakable sound culture as Music Director of the Cleveland Orchestra. Through innovation and co-operations, the Cleveland Orchestra now has one of the youngest audiences in the USA. Throughout his tenure, the orchestra has continued its strong commitment to newly-written music and brought back opera to the stage of the Severance Music Center. Franz Welser-Möst will remain Musical Director of the Cleveland Orchestra until 2027, the longest tenure of any Music Director the orchestra has had.
Franz Welser-Möst enjoys a particularly close and productive artistic partnership with the Vienna Philharmonic and regularly conducts the orchestra in subscription concerts at the Vienna Musikverein as well at the Salzburg Festival and on tours in Europe, Japan, China and the USA. Welser-Möst and the Vienna Philharmonic have also performed together at historical memorial concerts in Sarajevo and Versailles. Franz Welser-Möst has appeared three times on the podium for their celebrated New Year’s Concert (2011, 2013, 2023).
At the Salzburg Festival Franz Welser-Möst has set new standards in interpretation as an opera conductor with performances including Rusalka, Fidelio, Aribert Reimann’s opera Lear and Puccini’s Il Trittico. There has been a special focus on the operas of Richard Strauss, with Welser-Möst conducting Der Rosenkavalier, Die Liebe der Danae, and the much-lauded production of Salome. In 2020 and 2021 he conducted Strauss’ Elektra on the 100th Anniversary of the Salzburg Festival.
Franz Welser-Möst has been the recipient of a number of major honours and awards. He is Honorary Member of the Vienna Philharmonic, winner of the Vienna Philharmonic’s Honorary Ring, Honorary Member of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna and has been awarded the Kilenyi Medal of the Bruckner Society of America as well as the Kennedy Center Gold Medal in the Arts. In 2020, Franz Welser-Möst was awarded the Salzburg Festival Pin with Ruby and in 2021, he was awarded the Austrian Music Theatre Prize for Elektra at the Salzburg Festival in the “Best Musical Direction” category.
Franz Welser-Möst has made numerous CD and DVD recordings and many of his recordings have won international awards. In 2020, the Cleveland Orchestra founded its own streaming platform: adella.live. Various recordings from Severance Hall are available as stream, download and CD.
