Franz Welser-Möst Music Director Kelvin Smith Family Endowed Chair The Cleveland Orchestra
P H OTO BY D O N S N Y D E R
T H E 2 0 1 2 - 1 3 S E A S O N marks Franz Welser-Möst’s eleventh year as music director of The Cleveland Orchestra, with a long-term commitment extending to the Orchestra’s centennial in 2018. Under his direction, the Orchestra is acclaimed for its continuing artistic excellence, is enlarging and enhancing its community programming at home, 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. Concurrently with his post in Cleveland, Mr. Welser-Möst became general music director of the Vienna State Opera in September 2010. With a committed focus on music education in Northeast Ohio, Franz Welser-Möst has taken The Cleveland Orchestra back into public schools with performances in collaboration with the Cleveland Metropolitan School District. The initiative continues and expands upon Mr. Welser-Möst’s active participation in community concerts and educational programs, including the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra and partnerships with music conservatories and universities across Northeast Ohio. Under Mr. Welser-Möst’s leadership, The Cleveland Orchestra has established an ongoing biennial residency in Vienna at the famed Musikverein concert hall and another at Switzerland’s Lucerne Festival. Together, they have appeared in residence at Suntory Hall in Tokyo, Japan, and at the Salzburg Festival, where a 2008 residency included five sold-out performances of a staged production of Dvořák’s opera Rusalka. In the United States, Mr. Welser-Möst has established an annual multi-week Cleveland Orchestra residency in Florida under the name Cleveland Orchestra Miami and, in 2011, launched a new biennial residency at New York’s Lincoln Center Festival. To the start of this season, The Cleveland Orchestra has performed fourteen world and fifteen United States premieres under Franz Welser-Möst’s direction. Through the Roche Commissions project, he and the Orchestra have premiered works by Harrison Birtwistle, Chen Yi, Hanspeter Kyburz, George Benjamin, Toshio Hosokawa, and Matthias Pintscher in partnership with the Lucerne Festival and Carnegie Hall. In addition, the Daniel R. Lewis Young Composer Fellow program has brought new voices to the repertoire, including Pintscher, Marc-André Dalbavie, Susan Botti, Julian Anderson, Johannes Maria Staud, Jörg Widmann, and Sean Shepherd. Franz Welser-Möst has led a series of opera performances during his tenure
Severance Hall 2012-13
Music Director
15