Christoph von Dohnányi, the longtime music director of the Cleveland Orchestra and one of the most versatile conductors of his generation, has died, two days before he would have celebrated his 96th birthday.
Dohnányi, grandson of the Hungarian composer Ernst von Dohnányi, was reared in a cultured German family, two of whose members, his father, Hans, a prominent lawyer, and his uncle, the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, were prominent anti-Nazi figures, executed in the purge that followed the 1944 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler.
After World War II, Dohnányi graduated from the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich and studied with his grandfather, a refugee from communist-ruled Hungary, at Florida State University. His first appointment was as a vocal coach and assistant to Georg Solti at the Frankfurt Opera, a company he returned to as music director from 1968 to 1977, after leading the Lübeck Opera, Kassel State Orchestra and WDR (West German Radio) Symphony Orchestra of Cologne. From 1977 to 1984 he was intendant and chief conductor of the Hamburg State Opera, vacating the post after his brother became the city’s mayor.
In 1984, he began his 18-year tenure as music director of the Cleveland Orchestra, which had been artistically adrift since the death of George Szell in 1970. Dohnányi soon restored the virtuosity and chamber-like clarity and transparency that had distinguished the orchestra in the Szell years. (“We give a great concert and George Szell gets a great review,” Dohnányi ruefully remarked.)
Throughout his career, Dohnányi ventured far beyond the standard Austro-German classical-romantic repertory, performing and recording American maverick composers such as Charles Ives and Carl Ruggles, music of the Second Vienna School, and modern and contemporary European works by Hans Werner Henze, Witold Lutoslawski, Harrison Birtwistle and Alfred Schnittke.
That catholicity was reflected in his recordings, which ranged from the symphonies of Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Brahms and Dvořák to the concertos for orchestra of Bartók and Lutoslawski, Berg’s “Wozzeck,” Schoenberg’s “Erwartung,” Edgard Varèse’s “Amériques” and Philip Glass’ Violin Concerto No. 1. One collection from Cleveland juxtaposed Mozart’s late symphonies with works by Anton Webern.
Dohnányi also served as principal conductor of London’s Philharmonia Orchestra (1997-2008) and chief conductor of the NDR (North German Radio) Symphony Orchestra of Hamburg (2004-10), and was a frequent guest of leading European and US orchestras and opera companies.
An obituary by Tim Page for The Washington Post:
In a 2005 interview with Chicago broadcaster Bruce Duffie, Dohnányi recalled his career in operatic and orchestral conducting, and commented on the challenge of presenting great art to today’s audiences: “Entertainment is everything, and if you read ‘Don Juan in Hell,’ Bernard Shaw uses the expression, ‘Hell is where there is only entertainment.’ That’s about where we are at the moment, but it’s fun.”
The full interview:
(via http://slippedisc.com)
POSTCRIPT: Among the younger conductors who worked with and were mentored by Dohnányi, one whose name will ring a bell with music lovers in this part of the world: Steven Smith, who was assistant conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra (1997-2003) and went on to become music director of the Richmond Symphony (2010-19) and conductor of productions by Virginia Opera, the Richmond Ballet and the Brevard Music Center Festival in North Carolina.
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