The Bruckner Society of America has chosen Cleveland Orchestra Music Director Franz Welser-Möst as recipient of its Julio Kilenyi Medal of Honor. The award will be conferred on July 13 at New York’s Avery Fisher Hall, following a Cleveland Orchestra rehearsal for the orchestra’s July 13-17 concerts at the Lincoln Center Festival of Bruckner’s fifth, seventh, eighth, and ninth symphonies. Between August 2010 and July 2011, Welser-Möst and the Cleveland Orchestra will have played seventeen Bruckner symphony performances in Ohio, Scotland, Switzerland, Japan, and New York. As principal conductor of the London Philharmonic from 1990 to 1996, Welser-Möst released recordings of the fifth and seventh Bruckner symphonies; he also released a recording of the eighth symphony with the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra in 2002. The Kilenyi Medal of Honor—given to conductors, scholars, and musicologists who further the understanding and appreciation of Bruckner’s life and work—was created by the American sculptor Julio Kilenyi (1885-1959), with the first medals given in 1933. Previous Kilenyi Medal recipients include Arturo Toscanini, Serge Koussevitzky, George Szell, Eugene Ormandy, and Bruno Walter.
Posted June 17, 2011
