Franz Welser-Möst

Music Director
Kelvin Smith Family Endowed Chair
The Cleveland Orchestra

Franz Welser-Möst is in his eighth year as Music Director of The Cleveland Orchestra. His long-term commitment extends to the Orchestra’s centennial in 2018. Under his direction, the Orchestra holds residencies in the United States and Europe, champions living composers, partners with Northeast Ohio public schools and conservatories, and has re-established itself as an operatic ensemble. Concurrently with his post in Cleveland, Mr. Welser-Möst becomes General Music Director of the Vienna State Opera in the autumn of 2010.

Under Mr. Welser-Möst’s leadership, The Cleveland Orchestra holds ongoing residencies at Vienna’s famed Musikverein hall and Switzerland’s Lucerne Festival, along with an annual Miami Residency. In 2011, Mr. Welser-Möst and the Orchestra launch a biennial residency at New York’s Lincoln Center Festival, featuring The Cleveland Orchestra in Vienna State Opera productions.

Under Franz Welser-Möst, The Cleveland Orchestra has presented eleven world and fourteen United States premieres. In 2009, Mr. Welser-Möst led a Zurich Opera production of The Marriage of Figaro at Severance Hall. He and The Cleveland Orchestra will continue the Mozart/Da Ponte operas in Cleveland with Mozart’s Così fan tutte in 2009-10 and Don Giovanni in 2010-11.

Recent and upcoming international engagements include a new production of Wagner’s Ring cycle with stage director Sven-Eric Bechtolf at the Vienna State Opera. During the 2009-10 season, Mr. Welser-Möst leads additional Ring performances, as well as Wagner’s Tannhäuser and Parsifal, with the Vienna State Opera. In the summer of 2009, Franz Welser-Möst appeared with the Vienna Philharmonic at the Salzburg Festival, the BBC Proms, and the Lucerne Festival. He also conducted the Berlin Philharmonic at the 2009 Salzburg Easter Festival.

Following his 1989 American debut and prior to his appointment in Cleveland, Mr. Welser-Möst regularly guest-conducted the orchestras of Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angeles, New York, and Philadelphia. Mr. Welser-Möst was music director of the London Philharmonic from 1990 to 1996. Across his decade-long tenure with the Zurich Opera, culminating in three seasons as General Music Director (2005-08), Mr. Welser-Möst led more than 40 new productions. In the spring of 2010, he leads Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten and Mozart’s Così fan tutte in Zurich.

Mr. Welser-Möst’s recordings and videos have won the Gramophone Award, Diapason d’Or, Japanese Record Academy Award, and two Grammy nominations. Mr. Welser-Möst has led The Cleveland Orchestra in video recordings of live performances of the Bruckner Symphonies Nos. 5, 7, and 9. Mr. Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra released a recording of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony on Deutsche Grammophon in 2007.

Mr. Welser-Möst has been recognized by the Western Law Center for Disability Rights and is an honorary member of the Vienna Singverein. Musical America named him the 2003 Conductor of the Year.

Updated: January 2010