Christoph von Dohnanyi, who died Saturday at 95, was a model conductor.
He was a musician with an interest in the modern, but also one whose artistry was endowed with classical virtues: Whatever he conducted, it sounded dignified, discerning and lucid. At his best, his performances were defined by clarity and poise; they had an energy that gave scores new life, while still giving the sense you were in safe musical hands. They were also smart. “I don’t feel it’s an insult to call somebody an intellectual conductor,” he said.
Crucial to Dohnanyi’s conducting was his belief that musicians had to perform older music in a contemporary way. “I’m not interested in the Brahms of the 19th century,” he said in 2002. “I’m interested in the Brahms of the 21st century.” His interpretations flowed from that insight. He offered a more objective, modern alternative to the subjective, instinctual style of conductors like Wilhelm Furtwängler, who traced their style back to Richard Wagner. Never mind that Furtwängler had served as the unofficial chief conductor of the Third Reich, while Dohnanyi’s father and uncle, Hans von Dohnanyi and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, were executed while he was a teenager for trying to bring it down.
“If you’re a musician, this must have an effect on your music making,” he said of that dark past, though he rarely elaborated beyond that.
On recordings, Dohnanyi explored an admirable variety of music: Mozart and Beethoven, but also Philip Glass, John Adams and Harrison Birtwistle. Most of his records were made with the Cleveland Orchestra, whose excellence he maintained and developed as its music director from 1984 to 2002. But he also had productive recording relationships with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and the Philharmonia Orchestra, which he led for more than a decade. A recent box of Cleveland recordings made for Decca, in particular, is a magnificent testimony to what is possible for an orchestra and its conductor to achieve together.
Here are five personal favorites among Dohnanyi recordings.
Mendelssohn: The Symphonies (Vienna)
There is no finer example of what Dohnanyi stood for musically than this Mendelssohn cycle: direct and crisp, transparent and tactful, the readings still sound fresh half a century later. Take the “Scottish” Symphony, a recording that should be enough to dispel any notion that Dohnanyi was an emotionally distant conductor: supple enough that you feel the changes of mood, it’s not so melodramatic that you start to focus on Dohnanyi himself. It might not be quite so precisely managed as a later Cleveland remake, but it certainly has atmosphere.
Schumann: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 2 (Cleveland)
Schumann causes so many problems for so many conductors, but you would never know it from Dohnanyi’s masterly cycle of the four symphonies. His many virtues combine here brilliantly, his moderation finding an ideal outlet in music that, like Mendelssohn, needs a sure hand and a dose of good taste. The sound is warm but not unduly lush; tempos drive on but never feel harshly driven; transitions are fastidiously planned but still feel spontaneous; most importantly, the balances are impeccable, with the glorious Cleveland woodwinds to the fore. These are not just some of my favorite Dohnanyi recordings, but some of my favorite recordings, period.
Dvorak: Symphony No. 9 (Cleveland)
The legacy of George Szell’s long, domineering reign over the Cleveland Orchestra hung over the early years of Dohnanyi’s tenure, despite Lorin Maazel’s decade-long interregnum in between. Even if Dohnanyi and Szell existed in roughly similar interpretive traditions, though, they were audibly different conductors, as their efforts in the major Dvorak symphonies prove. Szell’s are formidable and authoritative, though they also have charm. Dohnanyi’s have a slightly softer edge and a generally more amiable, more spirited atmosphere. Thankfully, we don’t have to choose between the two.
Webern: Orchestral Works (Cleveland)
“I could not live making music if I could not make the music of my own time,” Dohnanyi said in 1984, though he drew a contrast to colleagues like Pierre Boulez and Michael Gielen, who had come to contemporary music earlier in their careers and were composers too. Like them, though, Dohnanyi gave sustained attention to Schoenberg, Webern and Berg, the composers of the Second Viennese School. He recorded Berg’s “Wozzeck” and “Lulu” with the Vienna Philharmonic, as well as Schoenberg’s “Erwartung”; from Cleveland came this essential Webern collection, parts of which were originally paired with to-the-point performances of late Mozart. The Webern is flawless: powerful yet elegant — deeply beautiful, and even more terrifying for that.
Ives, Ruggles and Seeger (Cleveland)
If Dohnanyi had a trademark American piece in his repertoire, it was Edgard Varèse’s “Amériques,” a colossal, clattering work perfectly suited to his ability to unpack a dense score. But he also made a habit of conducting Charles Ives and even Carl Ruggles, refining their raucous sprawl, though never leaving you in doubt that they were radicals. Perhaps most affecting among his recordings of American music, though, is Ruth Crawford Seeger’s short, seething “Andante for Strings”: four dissonant minutes that seem filled with the horrors that Dohnanyi, even as a boy, had known all too well.
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