Franz Welser-Möst

Franz Welser-Möst has been Music Director of The Cleveland Orchestra since September 2002. Only nine months into his initial five-year term, his contract was extended through the 2011/12 season, and in June 2008 a further extension was announced which will see him continue at the orchestra's helm until their centennial year in 2018. He and the orchestra have close relationships with Carnegie Hall in New York and the Musikverein in Vienna, and are in residence biennially at the Lucerne Festival. In January 2007, Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra began a ten-year residency at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County, Florida. In June 2007, Welser-Möst was appointed General Musikdirektor Designate of the Vienna State Opera; he takes up the position from the beginning of the 2010/11 season. His long partnership with the company has included acclaimed performances of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, and during the 2007/8 and 2008/9 seasons he undertakes a new production of Wagner’s Ring cycle. In the course of a long association with the Zurich Opera, Franz Welser-Möst served as Chief Conductor from 1995-2002, Principal Conductor from 2002-5, and from 2005-8 as the company’s General Musikdirektor. During this time, Welser-Möst conducted more than fifty premieres with the Zurich Opera, many of which were recorded on DVD by EMI, and toured to London, Paris, and Tokyo. From 1990-96, Franz Welser-Möst was Music Director of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, following his debut in 1986. In 1985 he made his Salzburg Festival debut. He appears regularly with the Vienna Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, Bavarian Radio Symphony and the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra, and has conducted all the major U.S. orchestras. Welser-Möst’s recordings, both on CD and on DVD, have won a number of major awards, including the Gramophone Award, the Diapason d’Or, the Japanese Record Academy Award and two Grammy nominations. Recent DVD releases for EMI include Zurich Opera productions of Der Rosenkavalier, La Bohème, Fierrabras, Don Giovanni and Peter Grimes. Recent CD releases include Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with The Cleveland Orchestra on Deutsche Grammophon, and five double-CD sets of recordings with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, re-issued by EMI as “The Welser-Möst Edition”. In June 2008, Euroarts released a DVD of Welser-Möst’s performance with The Cleveland Orchestra of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 9, filmed in the Vienna Musikverein in November 2007 on the occasion of the orchestra’s most recent Vienna residency. Franz Welser-Möst was named Conductor of the Year by Musical America in 2003, and is the co-author of Cadences: Observations and Conversations, which was published in a German edition in 2007. ══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════ Date Last Edited: 5th August 2008   Please contact [17]IMG Artists for an update before reproducing this biography.