Franz Welser-Möst is back with Cleveland Orchestra after cancer surgery and slipped disk

By RONALD BLUM
Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Franz Welser-Möst is back on the Cleveland Orchestra’s podium, concentrating again on music instead of his health. On track to surpass George Szell as Cleveland’s longest-tenured music director, the 63-year-old Austrian returned to his orchestra at Cleveland’s Severance Music Center last week and leads it in a pair of programs at Carnegie Hall this weekend. He had a slipped disk in his neck in June, surgery Sept. 1 to remove a cancerous tumor from his bladder and a second operation on Oct. 25. That was followed in November by six weeks of once-a-week immunotherapy treatment.