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100 Points
Feb 19
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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/composer
Composer, conductor, and creative thinker — John Adams occupies a unique position in the world of music. His works stand out among contemporary classical compositions for their depth of expression, brilliance of sound, and the profoundly humanist nature of their themes. His operas and oratorios such as Nixon in China, Doctor Atomic, and El Niño have transformed the genre of contemporary music theater. Spanning more than three decades, works such as Harmonielehre, Shaker Loops, The Dharma at Big Sur, and his Violin Concerto are among the most performed of all contemporary classical music.
As a conductor Adams has led the world’s major orchestras, programming his own works with a wide variety of repertoire ranging from Beethoven, Mozart, and Debussy to Sibelius, Ives, Carter, Philip Glass, and Ellington. Conducting engagements in 2023–24 include return visits to The Cleveland Orchestra and Los Angeles Philharmonic, performances with the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, and the European premiere of his new opera Antony and Cleopatra at the Teatre del Liceu. Other recent engagements include performances of Girls of the Golden West with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, The Death of Klinghoffer with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, and appearances with the St. Louis Symphony, Rotterdam Philharmonic, and Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich.
A provocative writer, he is author of the highly acclaimed autobiography Hallelujah Junction and is a frequent contributor to The New York Times Book Review. Since 2009 Adams has been creative chair of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Among his honorary doctorates are those from Yale, Harvard, Northwestern, and Cambridge universities and from The Juilliard School. In 2021 he was appointed Honorary Academician by the prestigious General Assembly of the Academicians of Santa Cecilia, and also received the Ditson Conductor’s Award from Columbia University.
In honor of Adams’s 75th birthday in 2022, Nonesuch Records released the 40-disc John Adams Collected Works, a box set of recordings spanning more than four decades of the composer’s career with the label. Also available is the Berlin Philharmonic’s John Adams Edition, a CD and DVD collection comprising seven of his works, conducted by Simon Rattle, Gustavo Dudamel, Kirill Petrenko, Alan Gilbert, and Adams himself.
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Composer
pianist/composer
Pioneering composer John Adams conducts a marquee lineup of Cleveland Orchestra premieres, including his Frenzy, an audacious work that reflects our dizzying modernity, and his own arrangements of Astor Piazzolla’s irresistible Argentine tangos. Following a contemplative fugue by Ives, pianist Aaron Diehl takes center stage in a concerto composed for him, Timo Andres’s delightful American pastiche Made of Tunes.
We offer a variety of concessions before and after the concert, as well as during intermission.
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