On November 2, Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra concluded their sixth international tour together. The tour was an unequivocal success, with Franz Welser-Möst and the Orchestra performing truly exceptional concerts for fervently enthusiastic audiences.

The artistic and emotional highlight of the tour was the Orchestra’s return appearances at the incomparable concert hall in Vienna, the Musikverein. During this third Vienna residency, the first of its kind by an American orchestra, Franz Welser-Möst led the Orchestra in four critically-acclaimed and sold-out performances, featuring Beethoven Symphony No. 7, Bruckner Symphony No. 9, and Mahler Symphony No. 2. Click here for more information on the Orchestra’s tour.

Get an all-access pass to the Orchestra’s sold-out concerts in Vienna. In the Orchestra’s photo gallery you’ll find gorgeous glimpses of the Musikverein, candid backstage images and beautiful performance shots that will give you an up-close look at these concert.

“Welser-Möst seems to have a completely immediate relationship to these Mahlerian idylls; not for him the critical questioning of that idyll that other conductors might engage in. The Clevelanders and their conductor are the right people to display and present all this with soberly brilliant clarity, with a fabulous acoustic presence and rich in contours in all sections….Even in the most powerful dynamic passages, the sound is always beautiful; the performance is about controlled force, logic, transparency….The result is a balance of brilliance and dignity, in a way probably achieved by no other orchestra these days.”

-- Kolner Stadtanzeiger October 29, 2007

“Franz Welser-Möst has a rare gift to express his joy at music-making and transmit that joy to the orchestra and the audience.”

-- Oberösterreischische Nachrichten November 2, 2007

“The Cleveland Orchestra under Franz Welser-Möst shone at the Musikverein. He is now in his sixth season with the orchestra which he has led into a new era. Welser-Möst is the opposite of a vain podium acrobat. His trademark is the sovereign calm and composure of his movements and an elegant way of giving cues with exemplary clarity. This calm should not be mistaken for detached coolness; time and again, thunderbolts of vigorous attacks erupt from it to emphasize striking moments, to build powerful surges and reach monumental climaxes. This is how the music director-designate of the Staatsoper gives each score its own physiognomy…Everything was displayed with the utmost clarity—simply ravishing!”

-- Die Presse November 2, 2007

“The dollar may show falling tendencies, yet the stock of this American orchestra has never been higher, after this convincing residency with four demanding concert programs. The Upper Austrian conductor manages without the glamour factor and attains top results thanks to his reliability and his persistence. For all the precise detail work and the carefully calibrated transparency of structures and transitions, Mahler’s down-to-earth musicianship was not lost. Welser-Möst did not succumb to the temptation of placing all the effects of the score on cheap display; rather, he showed humility before the comprehensive edifice of thought in this music, which points to the Beyond.”

-- Salzburger Nachrichten November 5, 2007

“They [Vienna Philharmonic] might then want to appropriate some of The Cleveland Orchestra’s virtues: an ensemble of mostly young virtuosos who subject themselves to a collective discipline and achieve great precision, along with an incredible perfection of the sound balance. Welser-Möst approached the work [Mozart’s Symphony in C major] with cool, radiant clarity with sublime pianissimos. With the interplays of light and shadow in Debussy’s Ibéria, the Clevelanders were completely in their element. Beethoven’s Seventh, then, was a real feast. The next day, Bruckner’s Ninth was an amazing synthesis of objectivity, idiomatic style (in the scherzo, one could almost hear the long vowels of the Upper Austrian dialect) and final disembodiment. The high point of the residency was Mahler’s Second. Something unheard-of happened in this performance. One isn’t sure where to begin the praise. But much praise belongs, without a doubt, to the conductor, an orchestra builder of the first rank.”

-- NEWS November 8, 2007

Get the inside scoop on the tour from members of the Orchestra. Listen to archived broadcasts of “Around Noon” on 90.3 FM WCPN ideastream, including an interview with Franz Welser-Möst and tour reports from Orchestra musicians on the road. Visit CoolCleveland.com’s Cleveland Orchestra Tour page and view video interviews with Cleveland Orchestra musicians Frank Rosenwein, Michael Sachs, and Joshua Smith; Executive Director Gary Hanson; Stage Manager Joe Short; and Cleveland Orchestra trustee and Baker Hostetler Managing Partner Hewitt Shaw.