Franz Welser-Möst

The Austrian conductor Franz Welser-Möst, who was born in 1960 in Linz, has helmed the Cleveland Orchestra since 2002 and will remain in that position until 2027, becoming the longest-serving Music Director in its history. In addition to concerts at Severance Hall and the Blossom Music Center, he and the Clevelanders perform in residencies across the United States, Europe, and China. He regularly focuses on music for the stage as well, as in Beethoven’s Fidelio in May 2026. Welser-Möst previously held leadership positions at such companies as Zurich Opera (1995 to 2008). He maintains a close collaboration with the Vienna Philharmonic and conducted its prestigious New Year’s Concerts in 2011, 2013, and 2023 and has led the orchestra on tours across the United States, Japan, China, and Australia. In 2024, the Vienna Philharmonic named him an Honorary Member. Welser-Möst’s 2025-26 engagements have included appearances with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra; in April 2026, he will conduct Berg’s Wozzeck at the Vienna Staatsoper, and in June he will return to the Berliner Philharmoniker. He is also a frequent and welcome guest at the Salzburg Festival, where in recent years he has led new productions of Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier, Die Liebe der Danae, Salome, and Elektra; Beethoven’s Fidelio; Reimann’s Lear; and Puccini’s Il trittico. Welser-Möst has received numerous awards for his recordings, including the Gramophone Award, the Diapason d’or, and the Japanese Record Academy Award. He is an Honorary Member of the Vienna Singverein as well as a recipient of the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art and the Kennedy Center Gold Medal of the Arts; he received the Festival Pin with Ruby in Salzburg in 2020, and, in 2021, the Austrian Music Theater Prize for his conducting of Elektra. His 2020 book From Silence: Finding Calm in a Dissonant World makes a case against “the noise of the world.”

Lucerne Festival (IMF) debut on 26. March 1999 conducting the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra in Mahler’s Sixth Symphony.

January 2026