Obituary: Christoph von Dohnányi

Christoph von Dohnányi, the distinguished German conductor who transformed The Cleveland Orchestra into one of the world’s leading ensembles, died on 6th September 2025, just two days before his 96th birthday.

Dohnányi was widely admired for his technical precision and the balanced sounds he drew from orchestras. He was Music Director of The Cleveland Orchestra from 1984 to 2002, a remarkable 18-year tenure that propelled the orchestra to global prominence and new artistic heights, blending European sensibilities with American power and precision. It was also a period in which he recorded more than 100 works with the ensemble, making it the most-recorded American orchestra of the time.

Born in Berlin on 8th September 1929, Christoph von Dohnányi came from a distinguished musical family. His grandfather was the renowned Hungarian composer and conductor Ernő Dohnányi, while his older brother Klaus von Dohnanyi became a prominent German politician and former mayor of Hamburg. His father, uncle and other family members were arrested for their role in a plot to assassinate Hitler and detained in concentration camps before being executed in 1945, when Christoph was 15 years old.

After the war, Dohnányi initially studied law, keen to play his part for justice in Germany, but in 1948 he transferred to the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München to study composition, piano and conducting. His first position was at the Oper Frankfurt, as an assistant to Georg Solti.

Dohnányi had a long-standing relationship – one which he described as “a real partnership” – with the Philharmonia Orchestra in London, starting in 1994. He served as Principal Conductor for 11 years from 1997, before being appointed Honorary Conductor for Life in 2008. He became chief conductor of the NDR Symphony (Elbphilharmonie) Orchestra in Hamburg in 2004.

He was particularly well known for his approach to programming and the belief that music of our time is equally as important as the established classics. He was much celebrated for his performances of the music of the Second Viennese School. “If it’s good music, I want to do it. It doesn’t matter if it’s Mozart or Varèse or Tippett – if it’s quality, it fits,” he said in an 1989 interview in Gramophone magazine.

As conductor, he saw himself in service to the musicians, but he remained the final authority on how to elicit meaning from a score. “I think good orchestras have a strong desire for a strong personality,” he said. “You see it in the Cleveland Orchestra: They have a desire for a strong person, but that person has to give his life to them and to music, and only then will they follow.”

Dohnányi is survived by his third wife Barbara Koller, a son and a daughter from his first marriage, and a son and two daughters from his second.