The Cleveland Orchestra Announces Nathaniel Silberschlag as Principal Horn Beginning with 2019-20 Season

The Cleveland Orchestra and Music Director Franz Welser-Möst have announced that Nathaniel Silberschlag will join the Orchestra as Principal Horn beginning the week of August 5. Mr. Silberschlag will sit in The Cleveland Orchestra's George Szell Memorial Endowed Chair.

"I'm thrilled and grateful to be joining The Cleveland Orchestra as the new principal horn," said Nathaniel Silberschlag. "Growing up in Southern Maryland, I was surrounded by everything music. I come from a very musical family and remember listening to recordings of The Cleveland Orchestra at a young age. It has such a special sound and an important and historic legacy of horn playing. I feel so privileged to have the opportunity to play under the baton of Cleveland Orchestra Music Director Franz Welser-Möst, whose performances and recordings I have found so influential. And to follow in the footsteps of the amazing principal horn players of this renowned ensemble - Myron Bloom, Richard Solis, and Richard King - is a dream come true. I can't wait to work with such inspiring and distinguished colleagues, especially the incredible musicians of the horn section."

Mr. Silberschlag will begin performing with The Cleveland Orchestra during the 2019 Blossom Music Festival and Summers@Severance seasons, and at the start of the 2019-20 Severance Hall season. The 2019-20 Cleveland Orchestra season encompasses 76 concerts over 26 weeks. A significant highlight includes a festival designed to explore music and art that was banned, marginalized, and destroyed during the Nazi's Degenerate Art movement, and the continuing impact of censorship on creative expression in society today. The festival will center on Alban Berg's Lulu, one of the 20th century's most influential operas, and includes partner programming with the area's notable arts institutions.

The upcoming Severance Hall season also features a continuation of Welser-Möst's rediscovery of rarely performed symphonies by Schubert and Prokofiev, Cleveland Orchestra debuts by eight guest artists, first-time Orchestra performances of a dozen works, and the world premiere of two compositions commissioned by the Orchestra from Oded Zehavi and Daniel R. Lewis Young Composer Fellow Bernd Richard Deutsch. In addition, the Orchestra will present works by six other contemporary composers - John Adams, Thomas Adès, Louis Andriessen, John Harbison, Olga Neuwirth and Michael Tilson Thomas - and 20th century works by American composers George Antheil and Florence Price.

Photo Credit: Wei-Ping Chou