The Cleveland Orchestra releases next audio recording release, featuring Berg & Strauss led by Music Director Franz Welser-Möst
Available June 2, 2023
On Friday, June 2, The Cleveland Orchestra’s next audio recording with Music Director, Franz Welser-Möst, featuring Berg’s Three Pieces from Lyric Suite & Strauss’s Suite from Der Rosenkavalier compiled by Welser-Möst, will be available worldwide, exclusively via digital streaming and download services.
A member of the Second Viennese School, Berg wrote the Lyric Suite while he was infatuated with Hanna Fuchs-Robettin. Both were married, yet Berg inscribed and intertwined their initials into a six-movement suite for string quartet. These ciphers and codes simmer subliminally under music that merges 12-tone techniques pioneered by Arnold Schoenberg with echoes of early-nineteenth century Romanticism. Berg later arranged the second, third, and fourth sections for string orchestra to create the Three Pieces, a trio of intense and passionately-argued movements captured on this recording.
The latent Romanticism of Berg is brought into full relief in the Suite in Three Parts from Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier. Compiled by Music Director Franz Welser-Möst, each part draws material from the opera’s respective act. Though the opera takes place in eighteenth-century Austria, Strauss employs the nineteenth-century Viennese waltz as a clever commentary on old-fashioned mores of a timeless past. Simultaneously tinged with nostalgia and pushing toward the future, Strauss’s music does no less than examine the human condition, from the exhilaration of early romance to the humiliation of rejection to the bittersweet melancholy that comes with the passage of time.
Later in 2023, The Cleveland Orchestra will release Schubert: Mass No. 6 (with the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus) available September 1, and Prokofiev: Symphony No. 4 available December 1. Visit The Cleveland Orchestra website for information on all recordings.
Promotional video
In the promotional video below, and at this link, Franz Welser-Möst speaks about his connections to Der Rosenkavalier. To view video of The Cleveland Orchestra in rehearsal at its home, Severance Music Center, see these links: Berg in rehearsal, Strauss in rehearsal.
Media Reviewing Access
Advance access to Berg: Three Pieces from Lyric Suite for String Orchestra and Strauss: Suite from Der Rosenkavalier (TCO-0007) for media reviewing is available upon request, as well as high-resolution images from the release, digital booklet, and photos of The Cleveland Orchestra and Music Director Franz Welser-Möst. Program notes for the works recorded are available at these links: Berg and Strauss.
Product information
The album will be released on June 2, and available to pre-order from April 7, with singles released on April 7 and May 5. The album was recorded live in the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Concert Hall at Severance Music Center. Complete information about the new recording is included below.
Berg: Three Pieces from Lyric Suite – Strauss: Suite from Der Rosenkavalier (Catalog No: TCO-0007)
Berg recorded May 2022, Strauss recorded March 2022 (Suite compiled by Franz Welser-Möst)
The Cleveland Orchestra
Franz Welser-Möst, conductor
Alban Berg (1885–1935)
Track 1: Three Pieces from Lyric Suite for String Orchestra: I. Andante amoroso
Track 2: Three Pieces from Lyric Suite for String Orchestra: II. Allegro misterioso – Trio estatico
Track 3: Three Pieces from Lyric Suite for String Orchestra: III. Adagio appassionato
Richard Strauss (1864–1949)
Track 4: Suite from Der Rosenkavalier, Op. 59, TrV 227: I. Stürmisch bewegt (from Act I)
Track 5: Suite from Der Rosenkavalier, Op. 59, TrV 227: II. Sehr lebhaft (from Act II)
Track 6: Suite from Der Rosenkavalier, Op. 59, TrV 227: III. So schnell als möglich (from Act III)
About The Cleveland Orchestra
Now firmly in its second century, The Cleveland Orchestra, under the leadership of Franz Welser-Möst since 2002, is one of the most sought-after performing ensembles in the world. Year after year the ensemble exemplifies extraordinary artistic excellence, creative programming, and community engagement. In recent years, The New York Times has called Cleveland “the best in America” for its virtuosity, elegance of sound, variety of color and chamber-like musical cohesion, “virtually flawless,” and “one of the finest ensembles in the country (if not the world).”
Founded by Adella Prentiss Hughes, the Orchestra performed its inaugural concert in December 1918. By the middle of the century, decades of growth and sustained support had turned the ensemble into one of the most admired around the world.
The past decade has seen an increasing number of young people attending concerts, bringing fresh attention to The Cleveland Orchestra’s legendary sound and committed programming. More recently in 2020, the Orchestra launched several bold digital projects, including the streaming broadcast series In Focus, the podcast On A Personal Note, and its own recording label. A long history of strong community support from across the ensemble’s home region continues to drive the Orchestra forward and has provided remarkable energy and focus throughout the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic. New initiatives for audience growth and community service have been launched in recent years, including new technological infrastructure and capabilities at its home, Severance Music Center, to capture the Orchestra’s unique artistry and the musical achievements of the Welser-Möst and Cleveland Orchestra partnership.
The 2022–23 season marks Franz Welser-Möst’s 21st year as music director, a period in which The Cleveland Orchestra earned unprecedented acclaim around the world, including a series of residencies at the Musikverein in Vienna, the first of its kind by an American orchestra. The Orchestra’s 100th season in 2017–18 featured two international tours, concluding with the presentation of Welser-Möst’s Prometheus Project, featuring works by Beethoven, on three continents.
Its acclaimed opera presentations, including Verdi’s Otello (2022), Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos (2019), Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande (May 2017), Bartók’s The Miraculous Mandarin and Bluebeard’s Castle (2016), and Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen (2014 and 2017), have showcased the ensemble’s unique artistry and collaborative work ethic.
Since 1918, seven music directors—Nikolai Sokoloff, Artur Rodziński, Erich Leinsdorf, George Szell, Lorin Maazel, Christoph von Dohnányi, and Franz Welser-Möst—have guided and shaped the ensemble’s growth and sound. Through concerts at home and on tour, broadcasts, and a catalog of acclaimed recordings, The Cleveland Orchestra is heard today by a growing group of fans around the world. Find out more.
About Franz Welser-Möst
Franz Welser-Möst is among today’s most distinguished conductors. The 2022–23 season marks his 21st year as music director of The Cleveland Orchestra. With the future of their acclaimed partnership extended to 2027, he will be the longest-serving musical leader in the ensemble’s history. The New York Times has declared Cleveland under Welser-Möst’s direction to be “America’s most brilliant orchestra,” praising its virtuosity, elegance of sound, variety of color, and chamber-like musical cohesion.
With Welser-Möst, The Cleveland Orchestra has been acclaimed for its inventive programming, its ongoing support for new musical works, and for its innovative work in presenting semi-staged and staged operas. An imaginative approach to juxtaposing newer and older works has opened new dialogue and fresh insights for musicians and audiences alike. The Orchestra has also been hugely successful in fostering a new and, notably, a young audience. To date, the Orchestra and Welser-Möst have been showcased around the world in 20 international tours together. In 2020, despite shutdowns caused by the global pandemic, the ensemble launched its own recording label—and new streaming broadcast performances with the In Focus series—to continue and extend sharing their artistry globally.
In addition to his commitment to Cleveland, Mr. Welser-Möst enjoys a particularly close and productive relationship with the Vienna Philharmonic as a guest conductor. He conducted its celebrated New Year’s Concert three times, and regularly leads the orchestra in subscription concerts in Vienna, as well as on tours in Japan, China, Australia, and the United States. He is a regular guest at the Salzburg Festival, where his work leading a series of opera performances has been widely admired. These have included Rusalka, Der Rosenkavalier, Fidelio, Die Liebe der Danae, Aribert Reimann’s Lear, and Strauss’s Salome and Elektra. At the 2022 Salzburg Festival, he led performances of Puccini’s Il Trittico and the Camerata Salzburg in a program of music by Schubert.
Franz Welser-Möst’s recordings and videos have won major international awards and honors. With The Cleveland Orchestra, his recordings include a number of DVDs on the Clasart Classic label, featuring live performances of five Bruckner symphonies and a multi-DVD set of major works by Brahms. A number of his Salzburg opera productions, including Der Rosenkavalier, have been released internationally on DVD by Unitel.
In 2019, Mr. Welser-Möst was awarded the Gold Medal in the Arts by the Kennedy Center International Committee on the Arts in recognition of his long-lasting impact on the international arts community. Other honors include The Cleveland Orchestra’s Distinguished Service Award (given during the ensemble’s 100th season celebrations for his focus on community and education), two Cleveland Arts Prize citations, the Vienna Philharmonic’s “Ring of Honor” for his personal and artistic relationship with the ensemble, recognition from the Western Law Center for Disability Rights, honorary membership in the Vienna Singverein, appointment as an Academician of the European Academy of Yuste, and the Kilenyi Medal from the Bruckner Society of America.
Franz Welser-Möst’s book From Silence: Finding Calm in a Dissonant World was published in Austria in July 2020, under the title Als ich die Stille fand, and rapidly rose to number one on the [German-language] best-seller lists, where it remained through much of 2021. The English version of From Silence was released worldwide in Summer 2021. Read more about Franz Welser-Möst.