For 23 years, Franz Welser-Möst has shaped an unmistakable sound culture as Music Director of The Cleveland Orchestra. Under his leadership, the Orchestra has earned repeated international acclaim for its musical excellence, continued its strong commitment to new music, and brought opera back to the stage of Severance Music Center. In recent years, the Orchestra also launched its own streaming platform, Adella.live, and a recording label. Today, it boasts one of the youngest audiences in the United States.
In addition to residencies in the US, Europe, and China, Welser-Möst and the Orchestra perform regularly at the world’s leading international festivals. Welser-Möst will remain Music Director until 2027, making him the longest-serving music director of The Cleveland Orchestra.
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 US. 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.
At the Salzburg Festival Franz Welser-Möst has set new standards in interpretation as an opera conductor with performances including Rusalka, Fidelio, Aribert Reimann’s opera Lear and Puccini’s Il Trittico. There has been a special focus on the operas of Richard Strauss, with Welser-Möst conducting Der Rosenkavalier, Die Liebe der Danae, and the much lauded production of Salome, with which he made festival history in 2018. In 2020 and 2021 he conducted Strauss’ Elektra on the 100th Anniversary of the Salzburg Festival.
In the coming season, Franz Welser-Möst returns to the Vienna State Opera with a new production of Beethoven’s Fidelio. From 2010 to 2014, Franz Welser-Möst was General Music Director of the Vienna State Opera, where, in addition to maintaining the broad repertoire of the House, he devoted himself in particular to the operas of the 20th century, including a special artistic focus on the operas of Leoš Janáček.
Franz Welser-Möst has been the recipient of a number of major honours and awards. He is Honorary Member of the Vienna Philharmonic, winner of the Vienna Philharmonic’s Honorary Ring, Honorary Member of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna 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 and many of his recordings have won international awards.