The Cleveland Orchestra extends sincere gratitude to our Touring Partner, Jones Day Foundation
Oct 5
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.
Music Director
Franz Welser-Möst has forged one of the most transformative artistic legacies in the history of The Cleveland Orchestra, as its seventh and longest-serving Music Director. Now in his 25th and final season, he has shaped its sound with extraordinary care and imagination, cultivating greater warmth and flexibility, while preserving precision and transparency. Since beginning his tenure in 2002–03, his leadership has characterized a quarter century of artistic excellence, community outreach, and global prominence.
Welser-Möst first appeared with The Cleveland Orchestra as a guest conductor in February 1993 and has returned every season beginning in 1995. By the end of the 2026–27 season, he will have led the Orchestra in more than 1,200 performances in 93 cities spanning 15 US states and 26 countries, including 701 concerts at Severance Music Center. He has appointed 56 of the Orchestra’s 100 current musicians, profoundly shaping its sound for a new generation. Welser-Möst’s tenure ushered in major milestones, from innovative opera stagings to the launch of its streaming platform, Adella.live, and its recording label.
Widely admired for his interpretations of Central European and Russian repertoire, Welser-Möst has also championed living composers, specifically through the Orchestra’s Daniel R. Lewis Composer Fellowship. His artistic partnerships have resulted in dozens of commissions and co-commissions, and at the close of the 2026–27 season, he will have led The Cleveland Orchestra in 27 world premieres and 21 US premieres.
Welser-Möst has made opera an annual tradition at Severance Music Center, culminating in the creation of the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Opera & Humanities Festival in 2023. Acclaimed productions of Dvořák’s Rusalka, Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos, Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen, and Mozart’s The Magic Flute demonstrated his commitment to large-scale storytelling. In May 2027, Welser-Möst leads a fully staged production of Richard Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten, a fitting capstone to his enduring artistic vision and remarkable legacy with The Cleveland Orchestra.
A defining aspect of Welser-Möst’s Cleveland career has been his work with The Cleveland Orchestra Chorus. He has consistently advocated for the all-volunteer ensemble as an essential artistic partner in performances ranging from symphonic masterworks to staged opera productions. In 2010, Welser-Möst appointed Lisa Wong to work with the Chorus and, in 2018, he named her Director of Choruses. Together, they have elevated the Chorus with performances at home and on the road.
Beyond Cleveland, Welser-Möst maintains a distinguished international career, marked by a longstanding artistic partnership with the Vienna Philharmonic. He regularly leads the ensemble at the Musikverein and on major international tours, and has already conducted the celebrated annual New Year’s concert three times. In 2024, he was named an Honorary Member of the Vienna Philharmonic, one of its highest honors. He is also celebrated for his interpretations of opera, conducting productions which have been widely acclaimed at the Salzburg Festival and the Vienna State Opera.
Composer
Richard Strauss was in his 80s, living in quiet isolation in his villa in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, close to the Austrian border in the Bavarian Alps. In the early days of the Nazi regime, he had briefly been president of the Reichsmusikkammer, a state music bureau. This was enough to make his position in Germany tenuous at the end of World War II, even though he had consistently tried to distance himself from the world and events around him. He and his wife, Pauline, chose to go into exile in Switzerland, where they lived until 1949, the last year of his life. In that year, his name was cleared by a denazification tribunal, so he was able to spend his 85th birthday and the last few months of life back at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, in the beautiful surroundings he loved.
He composed very little music in those years of exile. One work was his Oboe Concerto. Another was the Duett-Concertino for clarinet, bassoon, harp, and strings, an unusual work rarely performed today. He also composed some incomplete scenes for a comic opera titled The Donkey’s Shadow. The only other music he wrote in exile is the masterpiece that came to be known as his Four Last Songs, full of nostalgia and that autumnal tone of which Strauss was a master.
The first to be composed was Im Abendrot (At Sunset), based on a poem by Joseph von Eichendorff. This became the last in the set of four, and the one that touches most closely on the theme of death. It was sketched in 1946 but not finished until May 1948. Perhaps Strauss did not expect to compose anything more. But a friend sent him an anthology of Hermann Hesse’s poems, three of which Strauss set in quick succession: Frühling (Spring), Beim Schlafengehen (At Bedtime), and September — the last appropriately finished on September 20, 1948, and essentially the last music he ever wrote. He died a year later without hearing the songs performed.
Throughout these songs, Strauss is completely comfortable in a style he had perfected over many years. The scoring is intricate, full of active filigree in the upper voices, while the bass line moves slowly, underpinning harmonies that can change color with kaleidoscopic swiftness, yet never fail to resolve to cadences that seemed inevitable all along. Divided strings, gorgeous horn writing, and great restraint in the heavy brass, all at a gentle tempo (three of the songs are marked Andante) — these are the traits of a master in his twilight years.
Strauss never indicated the order in which the songs should be sung, apart from placing Im Abend at the end. The standard sequence places Frühling first, a song that invokes spring without a hint of gloom and takes the voice soaring higher than in the other songs, suggesting birdsong (“Vogelsang”) and the miracle (“Wunder”) of the season. There is a rapturous quality in the rich scoring that keeps the winds fully occupied, the strings divided into many parts, and trumpets and trombones silent.
September bids farewell to summer with much regret, expressed in shimmering textures and a wonderful melody that comes to full bloom at the words “Sommer lächelt” (summer smiles). The horn has the unforgettable last word.
Beim Schlafengehen touches on the oblivion of sleep that the soul longs for. Another wonderful melody is offered by a solo violin, to which the singer responds with a magisterial rising phrase while the cellos climb through two octaves. Never has the key of D-flat major been more expressively applied to the sense of peace and repose.
Im Abendrot is darker than the other songs, full of weariness and apprehension. As soon as death is mentioned, we hear the broad, climbing theme from the tone poem Death and Transfiguration, which Strauss had composed 60 years before, capturing hope for a transfigured future. As the music comes to a radiant close, life is not extinguished. High in the woodwinds, two piccolos evoke a pair of larks, and their faint twitterings linger in the air when all else has gone.
— 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, as well as Music in 1853: The Biography of a Year.
Frühling (Spring)Text by Hermann Hesse
In dämmrigen Grüftenträumte ich langvon deinen Bäumen und blauen Lüften,von deinem Duft und Vogelsang.
Nun liegst du erschlossenin Gleiss und Zier,von Licht übergossenwie ein Wunder vor mir.
Du kennst mich wieder,du lockst mich zart,es zittert durch all meine Gliederdeine selige Gegenwart!
In dusky hollowsI have long dreamtof your trees and blue skies,of your fragrance and birdsong.
Now you stand, revealedin glitter and glory,bathed in light,like a miracle before me.
You recognize me,you gently beckon,all my limbs tremblein your blessed presence!
SeptemberText by Hermann Hesse
Der Garten trauert,Kühl sinkt in die Blumen der Regen.Der Sommer schauertstill seinem Ende entgegen.
Golden tropft Blatt um Blattnieder vom hohen Akazienbaum.Sommer lächelt erstaunt und mattin den sterbenden Gartentraum.
Lange noch bei den Rosenbleibt er stehn, sehnt sich nach Ruh.Langsam tut er diemüdgewordnen Augen zu.
The garden mourns,cool rain sinks into the flowers.The summer shudderssilently, as it comes to an end.
Leaf after golden leaf dropsdown from the tall acacia tree.Summer smiles, astonished and weak,at the dying garden dream.
For a long while, within the rosesit lingers, yearning for rest.Slowly it closesits wearied eyes.
Beim Schlafengehen (At Bedtime)Text by Hermann Hesse
Nun der Tag mich müd gemacht,soll mein sehnliches Verlangenfreundlich die gestirnte Nachtwie ein müdes Kind empfangen.
Hände, lasst von allem Tun,Stirn vergiss du alles Denken,alle meine Sinne nunwollen sich in Schlummer senken.
Und die Seele, unbewacht,will in freien Flügen schweben,um im Zauberkreis der Nachttief und tausendfach zu leben.
Now that the day has made me tired,my ardent desire shallhappily receive the starry night,like a tired child.
Hands, cease all doing,brow, forget all thinking,all my senses nowwant to sink in slumber.
And the soul, unguarded,wants to soar in free flightin the magic realm of night,to live there deeply and a thousand times.
Im Abendrot (At Sunset)Text by Joseph von Eichendorff
Wir sind durch Not und Freudegegangen Hand in Hand;nom Wandern ruhen wirnun überm stillen Land.
Rings sich die Täler neigen,es dunkelt schon die Luft,zwei Lerchen nur noch steigennachträumend in den Duft.
Tritt her und lass sie schwirren,bald ist es Schlafenszeit,dass wir uns nicht verirrenin dieser Einsamkeit.
O weiter, stiller Friede!So tief im Abendrot,wie sind wir wandermüde —ist dies etwa der Tod?
Through sorrow and joywe have walked hand in hand;from our wanderings, let us restwell over the quiet land.
Around us the valleys are waning,the sky is already darkening,only two larks soar upwardsin the air, under the spell of a dream.
Step closer and let them flutter.Soon it is time to sleep;let us not lose our wayin this solitude.
O spacious, silent peace!So deep in evening’s glow,how tired of wandering we are —can this, perhaps, be death?
Marriage, parenthood, and the intimacies of family life, for most of us, are of consuming importance, permanent and inescapable. They are usually also private, personal matters, and the source of happiness, misery, or both. Painters and novelists have explored domestic subjects for centuries, and the self-portrait is an honored form of art. Why, then, was Richard Strauss ridiculed for portraying himself and his family in his music? How can the subject of domestic life be deemed unworthy of a composer’s creative efforts, condemned as in bad taste, when other artists and art forms have plunged its intimate and emotional depths to the fullest?
If a symphony can be pastoral, or fantastique, or Italian, or Rhenish, or pathétique, why not domestic? This was what the composer was thinking when he attempted to portray — and celebrate — the everyday private world he shared with his wife, Pauline, and son, Franz.
The Symphonia domestica belongs to the series of tone poems Strauss had been composing since the stunningly successful Don Juan of 1889, each more ambitious than the last. The new one was to be called a symphonic poem, not a tone poem (and it has recognizable scherzo and adagio sections, not unlike symphonic movements). Yet it is much more of a narrative with three principal characters. Two of them, his wife and himself, featured prominently in the previous tone poem, Ein Heldenleben. They are now joined by the baby, known as “Bubi,” whose squeals and tantrums — as well as his heavenly repose — are represented in the music.
The listener may prefer to know no more than that and let each section suggest what it will. Strauss originally explained events in considerable detail, then later removed most of the tags and cues, sensing the embarrassment that over-descriptive music can cause.
The musical themes for Strauss and his wife are a reflection of each other in diametrically opposing keys, F and B. They reappear constantly — his not always gently, hers not always angrily, although Strauss lays his cards on the table early on. His own themes at the opening are in turn comfortable (cellos), dreamy (oboe), morose (clarinets), fiery (violins), joyful (trumpet), and fresh (rushing scales).
Her themes follow immediately, but without labels. Pauline did not always make her husband’s life easy and even sometimes sneered at his music. One of their rows became the basis of his 1924 opera Intermezzo. Nevertheless, he remained devoted to her and recognized that he needed her, as the closing pages of the Symphonia domestica celebrate. Their marriage lasted more than half a century, until his death in 1949; she died 10 months later.
A folklike passage suggests bourgeois comforts (interrupted by passionate exchanges) before a sudden hash introduces the baby. He is represented by an important theme played by the oboe d’amore, an instrument familiar to J.S. Bach but not widely used in Strauss’s time. The baby is, of course, sweet when quiet but also capable of screaming. During his playtime, his theme is transformed into a gentle scherzo somewhat in Mahler’s manner.
As the baby gets drowsy, father looks on with pride. A gently rocking lullaby appears, and as the two parents each say “good night” to their own themes, a clock chimes 7 in the evening. All is calm and father settles down to his desk (the adagio, or third movement). The rich sound of horns introduces his thoughts taking shape and, although he is interrupted by his wife, the music flows freely and leads directly into a love scene. Strauss is at his descriptive best here, and why not? He did not need to apologize for any lack of delicacy since no words are needed.
The couple are soon asleep, although they are troubled by worried thoughts about the child in a surreal passage scored mostly for high instruments. They are woken by the clock again striking 7 in the morning.
The new day provides material for the extensive final scene (or movement). The baby’s theme, sped up, is the subject of a vigorous fugue, with the wife’s theme as a second subject, also treated as a fugue. In the course of this energetic music, tension grows between husband and wife, leading to a blazing row — but ending in reconciliation. Strauss’s sheer joy in composing and his unstoppable invention take over, well beyond the point where any storytelling is needed. This is no dirge on the miseries of home life — it is a triumphant celebration of a good and ideal life, brilliantly expressed.
Once again Strauss shows himself the master of the modern orchestra, in this case an orchestra larger than any he had called for before. A horn section of eight (as in Wagner’s Ring cycle) was established in Ein Heldenleben, but here he adds the oboe d’amore and a full quartet of saxophones, although Strauss is strangely cautious in their use, for they only play in sections for full orchestra and are never heard on their own. Indeed, in his own performances he did not use saxophones.
Strauss once boasted he could portray a teaspoon in music and compose the differences between a knife and a fork. Music can transform the trivial into the sublime, and the Symphonia domestica proves it quite admirably.
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, as well as Music in I853: The Biography of a Year.
Golda Schultz's performance is generously sponsored by Astri Seidenfeld.
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