The Cleveland Orchestra, Welser-Möst & Schultz

For more than a century, the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra has counted itself among the Big Five of American orchestras. The Austrian conductor Franz Welser-Möst is bringing the orchestra back to Bozar ten years after its last visit. This time, it will perform the symphonic poem Orpheus by Franz Liszt, a symbol of the immense power of music. In Brahms’ view, you should not be misled by the pastoral feel of his Second Symphony, because it detracts from the melancholy undertone of this work from 1877. Weltschmerz seeps through to us in the trombones and timpani. The South African soprano Golda Schultz also feels the sombreness lurking in Richard Strauss’ Vier Letzte Lieder, one of his last compositions. Death overshadows the piece: “Ist dies etwa der Tod?”.