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Now firmly in its second century, The Cleveland Orchestra, under the leadership of Franz Welser-Möst since 2002, is one of the most sought-after performing ensembles in the world. Year after year, the ensemble exemplifies extraordinary artistic excellence, creative programming, and community engagement. In recent years, The New York Times has called Cleveland “the best in America” for its virtuosity, elegance of sound, variety of color, and chamber-like musical cohesion.
Founded by Adella Prentiss Hughes, the Orchestra performed its inaugural concert in December 1918. By the middle of the century, decades of growth and sustained support had turned the ensemble into one of the most admired around the world.
The past decade has seen an increasing number of young people attending concerts, bringing fresh attention to The Cleveland Orchestra’s legendary sound and committed programming. More recently, the Orchestra launched several bold digital projects, including the streaming platform Adella.live and its own recording label. Together, they have captured the Orchestra’s unique artistry and the musical achievements of the Welser-Möst and Cleveland Orchestra partnership.
The 2025–26 season marks Franz Welser-Möst’s 24th year as Music Director, a period in which The Cleveland Orchestra has earned unprecedented acclaim around the world, including a series of residencies at the Musikverein in Vienna, the first of its kind by an American orchestra, and a number of celebrated opera presentations.
Since 1918, seven music directors — Nikolai Sokoloff, Artur Rodziński, Erich Leinsdorf, George Szell, Lorin Maazel, Christoph von Dohnányi, and Franz Welser-Möst — have guided and shaped the ensemble’s growth and sound. Through concerts at home and on tour, broadcasts, and a catalog of acclaimed recordings, The Cleveland Orchestra is heard today by a growing group of fans around the world.
conductor
Daniele Rustioni is one of the most compelling conductors of his generation and a major presence at leading international orchestras and opera houses. He recently completed his eighth and final season as music director of the Opéra National de Lyon and was named the first-ever music director emeritus of this institution. In addition, Rustioni served as the first-ever principal guest conductor of the Bavarian State Opera.
In September, Rustioni will become principal guest conductor of the Metropolitan Opera, only the third in the company’s history. He is music director laureate of the Ulster Orchestra and conductor emeritus of the Orchestra della Toscana.
Highlights of the 2025–2026 season include debuts with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre National de France, San Francisco Symphony, Seattle Symphony, and his Cleveland Orchestra subscription debut at Severance Music Center after his debut at the Blossom Music Festival. He also returns to the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Zurich Opera Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, and Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra.
In recent seasons, Rustioni has made many notable debuts, including with the London Symphony Orchestra, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, New York Philharmonic, Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, and The Philadelphia Orchestra. He has led performances at nearly all of the renowned international opera houses, including the Royal Opera House, Paris Opera, and Teatro alla Scala. His festival performances have included Aix-en-Provence, the BBC Proms, and the Salzburg Festival.
In 2022, Rustioni received the prestigious “Best Conductor” award from the International Opera Awards. He also recently received the “Chevalier des Arts et Lettres” of the French Republic for his cultural services.
Rustioni began his career in 1993 as a member of Teatro alla Scala’s children’s chorus. He continued his studies at Milan’s Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi, Siena’s Accademia Musicale Chigiana, and London’s Royal Academy of Music. He currently resides in London with his wife (violinist Francesca Dego) and their daughter.
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Composer
When it comes to roots, origins, sources, and influences, Debussy is one of the most complex of composers. He was so sensitive to experiences of all kinds — and so absorbent of images and ideas — that we may well envy his capacity to select and marshal artistic impressions of many kinds and then fashion them into new works of art.
Both the outer and inner world contributed to this storehouse of expression, which implies, in the case of La mer that he was not only affected by his own image of the sea and his own contact with it, but that he was also stirred into creating a musical portrait of the sea by other artists’ attempts to do so in other media, especially painting.
His actual contact with the sea was no more varied than that of other reasonably well-to-do Frenchmen of his generation. He spent holidays in Cannes and Arcachon and took advantage of a nearby seacoast during his time at the Villa Medici in Rome. In 1889, he suffered an alarming voyage in a small boat off of Saint-Lunaire, in Brittany.
Visits to London in 1902 and 1903 not only involved Channel crossings, they also allowed him to see a selection of paintings by J.M.W. Turner, whose work he knew and admired but only then was able to study in depth. That prompted Debussy to begin working on La mer in summer 1903, completing and performing the work two years later.
It was not only Turner whose vivid treatment of such subjects touched Debussy. The Impressionists had always appealed profoundly to him, and his work is in many ways a musical counterpart to theirs, La mer especially. The Japanese artist Hokusai, whose woodblocks inspired Monet, Degas, and Cassatt, also attracted the composer; his famous woodblock print, Under the Wave off Kanagawa, appeared on the cover of the full score at Debussy’s request.
“I have loved the ocean and listened to it passionately,” Debussy wrote, as the music instantly confirms. The surge and flow of the sea, the tiniest drops of spray and its whole broad sweep are vividly portrayed. At the same time the three movements, while only claiming to be symphonic “sketches,” add up to a more than passable imitation of a traditional symphony — the outer movements (themselves connected by cyclic recall of earlier themes) enclosing a brisk and breezy scherzo.
Th first movement, evoking the sun rising to its full splendor over the ocean, is the furthest from inherited ideas of formal rigor or musical structure, as it expands and progresses without ever going over its earlier material. Some striking ideas are heard many times, notably the abrupt little rhythm of two notes with which the cellos begin, and the rising and falling melody given out very early by the trumpet and English horn in octaves. As the movement gathers momentum, the wave-like phrases are more recognizable, and a striking episode for sixteen cellos stands out.
In the second movement, illustrating the intricate play of waves, Debussy’s delicate orchestral skill is on display, although there are episodes of disturbing force among the tracery of lighter textures. The third movement portrays the wind in dialogue with the sea, with clear evocations of the first movement. A broad new theme, not unlike those written by Debussy’s compatriot César Franck, recurs in various guises; two cornets join the brass section, and the themes tumble over each other as the work reaches its shimmering conclusion.
— Hugh Macdonald
Hugh Macdonald is Avis H. Blewett Professor Emeritus of Music at Washington University in St. Louis. He has written books on Beethoven, Berlioz, Bizet, and Scriabin.
Debussy’s La mer gushes into Severance on a wave of shimmering orchestral color, ebbing and flowing through three symphonic pictures that evoke the ocean’s power and majesty. Grammy-winning organist Paul Jacobs pulls out all the stops in Poulenc’s thundering Organ Concerto, and Daniele Rustioni leads The Cleveland Orchestra in a folkloric rhapsody by Alfredo Casella as well as Fauré’s breezy incidental music for Pelléas et Mélisande.
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