Ten years into his tenure, Time Magazine ran a feature that dubbed Dohnanyi's Cleveland Orchestra "the best band in the land." The headline for that story read: "The Finest Orchestra? (Surprise!) Cleveland."
"No other American orchestra can rival its combination of virtuosic technique, consummate ensemble playing and rich, burnished tone, especially in the Central European repertory of Haydn, Beethoven and Brahms," critic Michael Walsh wrote in the 1994 article. "It has also successfully branched out to opera: last month's dazzling concert version of Wagner's Das Rheingold, continuing a Ring cycle that is being recorded by London/Decca, was as fine a performance as one is likely to hear outside Bayreuth or the Metropolitan Opera."