It’s not often that an American music critic takes dead aim at the music director of the local orchestra. “Imagine, then, the horror felt by many people in Cleveland, Ohio, when Donald Rosenberg, critic of The Plain Dealer and one of North American’s most respected music journalists, came back from the Cleveland Orchestra’s recent west coast tour with an extremely blunt assessment of itsAustrian music director, Franz Welser-Möst. Three years into the conductor’s tenure, wrote Rosenberg, Welser-Möst’s interpretations were ‘vacant’; he was a conductor of ‘high proficiency and low inspiration’.”