A Cleveland Orchestra Homecoming

By UMS

On September 25, UMS’s 26/27 season begins with the return of an old friend.

After a 15-year absence, The Cleveland Orchestra returns to Hill Auditorium for a homecoming that carries an extra sense of occasion. The Orchestra will be led by Franz Welser-Möst, who is entering his 25th and final season as music director, making this Ann Arbor appearance a unique “last chance” to hear one of the great American orchestras alongside a longtime leader of its distinctive sound.

The program itself offers a fitting introduction to the season: three works connected by a sense of landscape, lyricism, and orchestral color. Franz Liszt’s Orpheus opens the evening, with music Camille Saint-Saëns famously described as “woven of sunbeams and starlight.” Bohuslav Martinů’s Symphony No. 2 follows, and it’s a work with a particularly strong connection to Cleveland, having been commissioned by the city’s Czechoslovakian community in 1943 and premiered by The Cleveland Orchestra. The evening concludes with Johannes Brahms’s Symphony No. 2, one of the composer’s most warmly pastoral works.

Watch on YouTube: The Cleveland Orchestra and Welser-Möst perform Brahms’s second symphony on tour in Vienna

But there’s another story worth celebrating on September 25: the story of The Cleveland Orchestra and UMS.

Nearly a century of music-making in Ann Arbor

Posters promoting The Cleveland Orchestra performances on campus  in 1949, 1952, and 1955

The Cleveland Orchestra’s relationship with UMS stretches back more than 90 years. Its first documented UMS performance took place at Hill Auditorium on March 28, 1935, when the Orchestra performed music by César Franck, Dmitri Shostakovich, Piotr Tchaikovsky, and Igor Stravinsky under conductor Artur Rodzinski.

Since then, the Orchestra has returned to Ann Arbor again and again, appearing more than 30 times in UMS’s performance history. In addition to Rodzinski, its Ann Arbor appearances have featured some of the most influential conductors of the 20th and 21st centuries: Erich Leinsdorf, George Szell, Pierre Boulez, Lorin Maazel, Christoph von Dohnányi, and, most recently, Welser-Möst.

The repertoire tells an equally fascinating story.

Under George Szell, who shaped The Cleveland Orchestra into one of the world’s most acclaimed ensembles during his tenure, UMS audiences heard works ranging from Mozart and Beethoven to Bruckner, Brahms, Hindemith, Tchaikovsky, and contemporary music. In 1965, for example, Szell led the Orchestra in Tadeusz Baird’s 1958 composition, Four Essays for Orchestra, alongside Mozart and Tchaikovsky.

The Orchestra’s UMS appearances have also reflected the adventurous programming that has long been part of its identity. In 1971, Pierre Boulez conducted Debussy’s Jeux, Bartók’s The Miraculous Mandarin, and Schumann’s “Rhenish” Symphony. In 1995, Christoph von Dohnányi led a program pairing Alfred Schnittke and Arnold Schoenberg with Brahms. And in 1996, the Orchestra performed an unusual program of orchestrated Schubert songs, Debussy’s La Mer, and Wagner’s Rienzi Overture.

The UMS archives also contain the occasional backstage drama. When the Orchestra performed Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in February 1995, bad weather nearly prevented soloist Emanuel Ax from reaching Ann Arbor. He ultimately arrived by private plane, while pianist Anton Nel rehearsed with the Orchestra as a contingency!

Welser-Möst’s Cleveland legacy

Franz Welser-Möst conducting The Cleveland Orchestra

The September 25 concert also brings the UMS-Cleveland Orchestra relationship full circle in a particularly meaningful way.

Welser-Möst first appeared with The Cleveland Orchestra as a guest conductor in 1993 and became its music director in 2002. Over the next quarter-century, he would help shape the ensemble’s sound, programming, opera tradition, and international reputation. By the conclusion of the 26/27 season, he will have led the Orchestra in more than 1,200 performances across nearly 100 cities and more than two dozen countries. He has also appointed more than half of the Orchestra’s current roster — a remarkable indication of the depth of his influence on the ensemble.

His tenure has been characterized by a combination of precision, transparency, warmth, and a deep engagement with Central European repertoire, while also embracing contemporary composers and ambitious opera productions. The Cleveland Orchestra’s 26/27 season is designed in part as a celebration of the musical identity Welser-Möst and the Orchestra have built together.

In their most recent UMS appearance in 2011, audiences heard Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra perform Wagner’s Tannhäuser Overture, Schumann’s Piano Concerto with Pierre-Laurent Aimard, and Bartók’s Music for Celesta, Percussion and Strings.

Fifteen years later, they’re back.

A new season, and a moment in history

There’s something especially fitting about beginning a new UMS season with an ensemble that has been part of the institution’s history for generations.

The Cleveland Orchestra’s return connects the present to a remarkable musical lineage: from Artur Rodzinski’s 1935 appearance, through George Szell’s celebrated Ann Arbor visits, to the adventurous programs led by Boulez, Maazel, and Dohnányi. And now, to Welser-Möst’s final season at the helm.

While the Orchestra’s UMS history stretches back to 1935, every performance is ultimately about the moment when the musicians walk onto the stage and the hall falls silent. Join us on Friday, September 25 for a milestone performance that marks both a thrilling homecoming and a bittersweet farewell.

Buy Tickets

Starting at $30 (+ fees). $15-20 student tickets available

Bonus

Look through our full performance archive (and more vintage posters!) with The Cleveland Orchestra on UMS Rewind.