Christoph von Dohnányi (1929-2025)

The veteran German conductor, perhaps best known for his tenure as music director of The Cleveland Orchestra, has died in Munich, two days before he would have turned 96.

Two famous names came together in Dohnányi’s family - the Bonhoeffers (antifascist dissident priest Dietrich Bonhoeffer was both his uncle and his godfather, and was executed by the Nazis, along with several other family members who had been active resistance members, when Christoph was a teenager) and of course the Dohnányis - the composer Ernst von Dohnányi (Dohnányi Ernő), of Hungarian background, was his grandfather.

Dohnányi himself initially set out to study law, inspired to right wrongs by his experience of the Nazi era, but quickly found himself drawn to music. After studying in Munich he was soon drawn into the orbit of the city’s opera house, finding early employment as a pianist and vocal coach. A visit to Florida State University to further his studies with his grandfather (by that time resident in the USA) followed, and not long afterwards he was spotted by the conductor Georg Solti, who took him under his wing and brought him on board at the Frankfurt Opera as a répétiteur. Indeed, in due course Dohnányi succeeded Solti at Frankfurt, holding the top job there until moving to Hamburg in 1977.

1984 was in many ways the turning-point for Dohnányi’s conducting career - appointed as music director at Cleveland against the odds, and ending the orchestra’s two-year hunt for a successor to Lorin Maazel. Between then and 2002 he and the orchestra became a recording powerhouse, recording over 100 works and leaving other US orchestras in the shade. These ranged from the well-loved favourites of the Classical and Romantic canon up to more adventurous works from the Second Viennese School. His recordings of Bruckner were recently taken up by SOMM’s restoration engineer Lani Spahr and re-released to great acclaim as part of the bicentennial celebrations, but he was equally at home in Webern and Lutoslawski as in Germanic Romanticism. 

Dohnányi conducted around the world, though particularly in the USA - guesting with orchestras from coast to coast - and in Germany and Austria, with spells at the NDR Symphony Orchestra, Wiener Philharmoniker and Wiener Staatsoper to name just three. In his later years he also acted as a mentor to a number of rising conductors who have gone on to forge stellar careers in their own right - Michael Stern and Alan Gilbert in particular. 

Married three times - to actress Renta Zillessen and soprano Anja Silja, and lastly to violist and arts manager Barbara Koller, he is survived by Barbara and by his five children - Katja, Justus, Julia, Benedikt and Olga.