Hill Auditorium
Canceled: The Cleveland Orchestra
$15-20 student tickets available
Tonight’s performance by The Cleveland Orchestra has been canceled. The musicians of The Cleveland Orchestra went on strike early this morning, preventing this evening’s performance from taking place. Ticketholders will receive text and email updates with instructions on how to exchange their tickets for another 26/27 season performance, donate the value of their tickets, or request a refund.
We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your understanding. We greatly respect The Cleveland Orchestra — its musicians, the leadership, and the entire organization. We wish them the very best in resolving their contract negotiations and hope to welcome them back to Hill Auditorium soon.
After a 15-year absence, The Cleveland Orchestra returns to Ann Arbor to open UMS’s season, with a program conducted by Franz Welser-Möst in his 25th and final year as music director of the ensemble. The performance opens with one of Liszt’s 12 symphonic poems, Orpheus, a work that composer Camille Saint-Saëns said is “woven of sunbeams and starlight.” Bohuslav Martinů’s Symphony No. 2, commissioned by the Czechoslovakian community in Cleveland in 1943 and premiered by the Orchestra, is appreciated for its pastoral character and a joie de vivre that has been likened to fellow Czech Antonín Dvořák’s orchestral compositions. The program closes with Johannes Brahms’s second symphony, another pastoral work with mischievous dances and peaceful melodies.
PROGRAM (Fri 9/25/2026: Hill Auditorium)
Franz Liszt Orpheus
Bohuslav Martinů Symphony No. 2, H. 295
Johannes Brahms Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 73
Thank You to Our Sponsors
PERMANENTLY ENDOWED SUPPORT
- Ilene H. Forsyth Choral Union Endowment Fund
PRESENTING SPONSOR
- Shaomeng Wang and Ju-Yun Li
FUNDED IN PART BY
- Dr. M. Lee Pearce Foundation
MEDIA PARTNERS
Franz Welser-Möst continues to shape an unmistakable sound culture as Music Director of The Cleveland Orchestra. Under his leadership, the Orchestra has earned repeated international acclaim for its musical excellence, reaffirmed its strong commitment to new music, and brought annual opera productions back to the stage of Severance Music Center. In recent years, the Orchestra also launched its own streaming platform, Adella.live, and a recording label. Today, it boasts one of the youngest audiences in the United States.
In addition to residencies in the US and Europe, Welser-Möst and the Orchestra perform regularly at the world’s leading international festivals. Welser-Möst will remain Music Director until 2027, making him the longest-serving music director of The Cleveland Orchestra.
Welser-Möst enjoys a particularly close and productive artistic partnership with the Vienna Philharmonic. He regularly conducts the orchestra in subscription concerts at the Vienna Musikverein, at the Salzburg Festival, and on tour in Europe, Japan, China, and the US, and has appeared three times on the podium for their celebrated New Year’s Concert (2011, 2013, and 2023). At the Salzburg Festival, Welser- Möst has set new standards in interpretation as an opera conductor, with a special focus on the operas of Richard Strauss.
Among Welser-Möst’s many honors and awards, he was named an Honorary Member of the Vienna Philharmonic in 2024, one of the orchestra’s highest distinctions.
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