The Cleveland Orchestra Centennial Celebration

The Cleveland Orchestra was founded in 1918. Over the ensuing decades, the orchestra quickly grew from a fine regional organization to being one of the most admired symphony orchestras in the world. For the Anniversary Gala, Cleveland Orchestra Music Director Franz Welser-Möst led a programme that offered works touching on more than a century of Viennese musical traditions with Lang Lang performing Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24. The remainder of the concert featured works by Richard and Johann Strauss (Frau Ohne Schatten, Wiener Blut), and concluded with Ravel’s viscerally cataclysmic La Valse, which dramatically evokes the changing artistic worlds between the 19th and 20th centuries.