The Cleveland Orchestra has signed music director Franz Welser-Möst to a second five-year contract less than a year into his first term, The Plain Dealer of Cleveland reports.
The new agreement, unprecedented in the orchestra's history, extends the Austrian conductor's tenure through the 2011–12 season, the newspaper says.
Financial terms were not disclosed. The Plain Dealer says Welser-Möst's initial salary was $1.2 million per year but he recently took a 10 percent pay cut to help the orchestra cut costs.
Welser-Möst, 42, was picked in June, 1999, to succeed Christoph von Dohnányi. Thomas Morris, the Cleveland's executive director, said the orchestra was hoping to develop a long-term artistic partnership when it chose Welser-Möst and it is pleased that he intends to stay.
"Great relationships between orchestras and conductors are built over a long period of sustained time," Morris told the newspaper. "And that's what we're committed to."
— Michael Markowitz
"Welser-Möst to lead
orchestra through 2012"
Donald Rosenberg - The Plain
Dealer [Cleveland] - 15 May 2003
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