Franz Welser-Möst

Music Director, Cleveland Orchestra

Eric Ericson Honorary Chair with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic

Managed in association with Enticott Music Management

Biography

For 21 years, Franz Welser-Möst has shaped an unmistakable sound culture as Musical Director of the Cleveland Orchestra. Under his leadership, the orchestra has been repeatedly praised by international critics for its musical excellence. Through innovative projects and co-operations, young audiences have been continuously approached and consulted and, as a result of these initiatives, the Cleveland Orchestra now has one of the youngest audiences in the USA. Throughout his tenure, he has continued the historical tradition of the Orchestra by having a strong presence of both newly-commissioned works and opera productions within the artistic programming. In addition to orchestral residencies in the USA, Europe and China, he and the Cleveland Orchestra are regular guests at all the major international festivals. Franz Welser-Möst will remain Musical Director of the Cleveland Orchestra until 2027, the longest tenure of any Music Director the orchestra has had.

As a guest conductor, Franz Welser-Möst enjoys a particularly close and productive artistic partnership with the Vienna Philharmonic. He regularly conducts the orchestra in subscription concerts at the Vienna Musikverein, as well as 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). The 2023 New Year’s Concert was hailed by critics and audiences as one of the best in the concert’s history.

Franz Welser-Möst is also a regular guest at the Salzburg Festival where he has set new standards in interpretation as an opera conductor with recent performances including Rusalka, Der Rosenkavalier, Fidelio, Die Liebe der Danae, Aribert Reimann’s opera Lear and Richard Strauss’ Salome, with which he made festival history in 2018. In 2020 he conducted Strauss’ Elektra on the 100th Anniversary of its premiere, and was during that same period awarded the Ruby Festival Brooch. Franz Welser-Möst returned to Salzburg to conduct further performances of Elektra in 2021. In 2022 he conducted Giacomo Puccini’s Il Trittico and next summer he will lead a new production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Macbeth.

Franz Welser-Möst has been the recipient of a number of major honours and awards. He is Honorary Member of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna, winner of the Vienna Philharmonic’s Honorary Ring, 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 in and in 2021, he was awarded the Austrian Music Theatre Prize for Elektra at the Salzburg Festival in the “Best Musical Direction” category.

Immediately following its release in summer 2020, Franz Welser-Möst’s latest book, Als ich die Stille fand. Ein Plädoyer gegen den Lärm der Welt, became a No. 1 Austrian bestseller. In 2021 the book was translated and published in English (From Silence: Finding Calm in a Dissonant World).

Franz Welser-Möst has made numerous CD and DVD recordings, including the recording of Der Rosenkavalier and Salome from the Salzburg Festival, and many of his recordings have won international awards. In the summer of 2022, the Vienna Philharmonic released a live recording of a concert at the Salzburg Festival with Richard Strauss’ Rosenkavalier-Suite and Alpine Symphony in its Special Annual Edition series.

In 2020, the Cleveland Orchestra founded its own streaming platform: adella.live. Various recordings from Severance Hall are available as stream, download and CD. CDs with compositions by Richard Strauss and with works by the American composer George Walker have just been released on the Cleveland Orchestra’s own CD label.

www.welsermoest.com

Reviews

“Welser-Möst and the Cleveland players, joined at the hip, … offered playing divinely precise, exquisitely refined.”

The Arts Desk

“A truly exceptional evening with the Bavarian State Orchestra and its marvellous musicians who responded in an all-consuming way to the precise and careful indications of this Maestro, moved just as much by the spirit as by the nuances and subtleness of the Straussian language. […] The way in which the Austrian Maestro conducted was a pure miracle – with an indescribable touch and with perfect knowledge of this Straussian music he passed mysterious movements to the orchestra, which responded like a giant chamber orchestra.”

Süddeutsche Zeitung

More Reviews

“Welser-Möst and the Cleveland players, joined at the hip, … offered playing divinely precise, exquisitely refined.”

The Arts Desk Sep 9th 2014

“A truly exceptional evening with the Bavarian State Orchestra and its marvellous musicians who responded in an all-consuming way to the precise and careful indications of this Maestro, moved just as much by the spirit as by the nuances and subtleness of the Straussian language. […] The way in which the Austrian Maestro conducted was a pure miracle – with an indescribable touch and with perfect knowledge of this Straussian music he passed mysterious movements to the orchestra, which responded like a giant chamber orchestra.”

Süddeutsche Zeitung Jun 11th 2014

““Mr. Welser-Möst and his wondrous orchestra refuse to let the music’s churning textures ever settle into sluggishness, […] a musical performance of impeccable quality and wide textural range, from the rustle of strings tapped with the wood of bows at the beginning to the horn fanfares that open the final scene with unassuming flawlessness. Mr. Welser-Möst treats the score — as he did Strauss’s “Salome” with this orchestra in 2012 — with a lithe flexibility that gives climaxes a fearsomely contrasting grandeur and weight.””

New York Times May 24th 2014

“Dynamics, controlled impatience, intimate poetry: all there. Cheers and Jubilee for Welser-Möst. | Vienna State Opera ‘Ring Cycle'”

Der Standard May 1st 2013

“This was one of the most beautiful New Year’s Concerts since Karajan and Kleiber. Franz Welser-Möst knows how the music of the Strauss-dynasty, the music of Lanner and Hellmesberger has to sound.”

Österreich Jan 2nd 2011

“The Cleveland Orchestra’s triumphant performance of Richard Strauss’s Salome […] The great interlude… was stunning, not just for the virtuosity with which the orchestra dealt with its turbulent pile-up of leitmotifs, but also for the way that the eerily quiet passage for contrabassoon held the audience rapt. [Franz Welser-Möst] ensured that there was ample excitement to go around, while letting the music unfold with structural logic and maximizing opportunities for sumptuous playing.”

Musical America May 28th 2012

“What the [Vienna] Philharmonic Orchestra under the confident conductorship Franz Welser-Moests deliver is breathtaking…. it is especially exhilarating in its musical swing and the expressive directness.”

Die Presse Sep 12th 2011

“And in fact, [the Bolero] sounded fabulous—with those weapons that Welser-Möst handles so scrupulously: precision, rhythmic control, a certain highly effective minimalism. All that, plus the assurance of having an orchestra like the Cleveland at his command: compact, secure, even luminous. The artistic results are overwhelmingly effective. It is the art of perfection, pure and simple.”

El Pais Nov 1st 2011