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 the highest standards of artistic excellence and creative programming.
The partnership with Franz Welser-Möst, now in its eighth season, has earned The Cleveland Orchestra unprecedented residencies in the United States and in Europe, including its ongoing residency at the Musikverein in Vienna – the first of its kind by an American orchestra. 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. Through the Roche Commissions project, Franz Welser-Möst and the Orchestra have premiered works by Harrison Birtwistle, Chen Yi, Hanspeter Kyburz, and George Benjamin. This summer’s commission is Toshio Hosokawa’s Woven Dreams.
In the United States, Mr. Welser-Möst and the Orchestra appear regularly at Carnegie Hall, and in January 2007 an unprecedented long-term residency project in Miami, Florida began. In 2011, the Orchestra begins a residency at New York’s Lincoln Center Festival featuring Mr. Welser-Möst conducting the Orchestra, initially in concert and subsequently in productions of the Vienna State Opera. Mr. Welser-Möst becomes General Music Director of the Vienna State Opera in September 2010, concurrent with his Cleveland position.
Founded in 1918, The Cleveland Orchestra has been led by seven music directors (Nikolai Sokoloff 1918-33, Artur Rodzinski 1933-43, Erich Leinsdorf 1943-46, George Szell 1946-70, Lorin Maazel 1972-82, Christoph von Dohnányi 1984-2002, and Franz Welser-Möst 2002-present), and one musical advisor (Pierre Boulez 1970-72). Today, touring, residencies, and recordings and radio broadcasts available online and on Dvd and Cd provide access to the Orchestra’s music-making to a broad and loyal constituency around the world.