Below is the announcement that Franz Welser-Moest will succeed Christoph
von Dohnanyi as Music Director of the Cleveland Orchestra.
Monday, June 7, 1999
By DONALD ROSENBERG
PLAIN DEALER MUSIC CRITIC
Franz Welser-Moest, the 38-year-old Austrian conductor whose career
over the last decade has risen and fallen and risen again, will
succeed Christoph von Dohnanyi as music director of the Cleveland
Orchestra in 2002.
Thomas W. Morris, executive director of the orchestra, said last
night that a board meeting yesterday was followed by one with members
of the orchestra, the staff and the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus to
discuss "future artistic direction." Sources inside the orchestra
confirmed Welser-Moest as the choice.
Welser-Moest, music director of the Zurich Opera, is flying to
Cleveland today to attend a news conference at which his appointment
will be officially announced by the Musical Arts Association, the
orchestra's parent organization. He will become the seventh music
director of the Cleveland Orchestra, following Nikolai Sokoloff
(1918-1933), Artur Rodzinski (1933-43), Erich Leinsdorf (1943-46),
George Szell (1946-70), Lorin Maazel (1972-82) and Dohnanyi, who will
have completed a highly lauded 18-year tenure by 2002.
Dohnanyi's current contract includes an option to extend his tenure
until 2004. The German conductor, who is also principal conductor
of the Philharmonia Orchestra of London, had said he probably wouldn't
stay beyond the 2001-02 season. The board reportedly never asked
him to remain after 2002.
In hiring Welser-Moest, the board concluded a search with many twists
and turns. Welser-Moest, who made his guest conducting debut here
in 1993, was viewed as a top contender until last fall, when two of
his three weeks of concerts didn't sustain the level of his previous
engagements. He wasn't alone. The other potential candidates -
Esa-Pekka Salonen, music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic;
Christoph Eschenbach, music director of the Houston Symphony and
Chicago Symphony's Ravinia Festival; and Christian Thielemann, music
director of the Deutsche Oper Berlin - also led disappointing concerts
last fall.
Salonen's statement in February that he had turned down the Cleveland
post appeared to put the search process in jeopardy. But Welser-Moest's
experience in mainstream symphonic repertoire, reputation for taking
artistic risks, success here in previous years and superb work at
the Zurich Opera evidently prompted orchestra officials to pursue
him. His swift rise to prominence in the music world is legendary.
Born Franz Leopold Maria Moest in 1960 in Linz, hometown of Anton
Bruckner, he studied violin as a young man and began conducting at
14. On Nov. 19, 1978, the 150th anniversary of Schubert's death,
he was on his way to a concert when he was injured in a car accident
that crushed several vertebra and weakened two fingers on his left
hand. The result was his switch from violin to conducting.
Welser-Moest led concerts in Switzerland and Sweden before becoming
conductor of the Austrian Youth Orchestra in 1985. Around that time,
he met Baron Andreas von Benningsen, a Swiss-German music lover who
became his manager and legally adopted him, though Welser-Moest's
parents are still alive.
Benningsen persuaded him to change his surname from Moest to
Welser-Moest in tribute to the town of Wels, near Linz, which is part
of the conductor's family history. The baron and Welser-Moest later
became estranged, and the conductor married the baron's ex-wife,
Angelika. In 1986, Welser-Moest got his big break when he substituted
on short notice for Jesus Lopez-Cobos at a concert with the London
Philharmonic. The orchestra was so impressed with the elegant,
bespectacled maestro that it hired him as music director, beginning
a tumultuous six-year tenure.
Welser-Moest was caught in the crossfire of London's often
turbulent musical politics and was lambasted by critics. The problems
actually centered on the orchestra's funding problems and the musicians'
frenetic freelance schedules, which left insufficient time for
rehearsals. Zurich Opera, where he is credited with greatly improving
the orchestra and with luring major conductors and singers for
productions that are admired throughout Europe. One of the conductors
at the Zurich Opera next month will be Dohnanyi, who will lead a
production of Verdi's "Un ballo in maschera" the same week his
Cleveland successor conducts Strauss' "Ariadne auf Naxos," Wagner's
"Tannhaeuser" and Franz Schmidt's oratorio "The Book of the Seven
Seals."
Welser-Moest made his U.S. debut in 1989 with the St. Louis Symphony,
the same orchestra with which Szell and Dohnanyi made their respective
American debuts. In the last decade, Welser-Moest has appeared as guest
conductor of most of America's major orchestras. He has made many
recordings for EMI Classics.
Mark
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