Cleveland Orchestra / Welser-Möst

The Cleveland Orchestra is one of the so-called Big Five American symphony orchestras. It rose to international prominence in the mid-20th century under George Szell. Since 2002, Franz Welser-Möst has completed the ranks of important orchestra conductors. He will continue to lead the outstanding US orchestra until 2027. As part of a European tour, the Cleveland Orchestra is now performing with its chief conductor with a programme that ranges from classical music to the present day.

Solemn, intense and homely
The programme opens with the last symphony that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed in Salzburg. The festive Symphony in C major K 388 with timpani and trumpets was probably first performed in Vienna in April 1781. Bernd Richard Deutsch's »Intensity«, an orchestral work premiered by the Cleveland Orchestra in 2022 and dedicated to Franz Welser-Möst by the composer, is then on the programme. It is based, among other things, on a trumpet chord that Deutsch borrowed from Mussorgsky's »Pictures at an Exhibition«. The relatively rarely heard »Sinfonia domestica« by Richard Strauss forms the third item on the programme. It is extremely lavishly scored, but is dedicated to the composer's domestic family life. After the premiere of his tone poem in 1904, the certainly not modest composer confessed: »›Domestica‹ is a success for me, sounds great, is very fine, also brilliant, lasts 41 minutes, but still keeps the audience in breathless suspense.