Ernst von Dohnányi (Hungarian: Dohnányi Ernő, in Hungarian pronounced as /ˈɛrnøː ˈdohnaːɲi/; 27 July 1877 – 9 February 1960) was a Hungarian composer, pianist and conductor. He used the German form of his name on most published compositions.[1]
Dohnányi was born in Pozsony, Kingdom of Hungary (today Bratislava, Slovakia). Born into the old noble Dohnányi family, he was the son of Frigyes Dohnányi (1843-1909) and his wife, Ottilia Szlabey.[2] He first studied music with his father, a professor of mathematics and an amateur cellist, and then when he was eight years old, with Carl Forstner, organist at the local cathedral. In 1894 he moved to Budapest and enrolled in the Royal National Hungarian Academy of Music, studying piano with István Thomán and composition with Hans von Koessler, a cousin of Max Reger.[3]
István Thomán had been a favorite student of Franz Liszt, while Hans von Koessler was a devotee of Johannes Brahms's music. These two influences played an important part in Dohnányi's life: Liszt on his piano playing and Brahms on his compositions. Dohnányi's first published work, his Piano Quintet in C minor, earned approval from Brahms, who promoted it in Vienna. Dohnányi did not study long at the Academy of Music: in June 1897 he sought to take the final exams right away, without completing his studies. Permission was granted, and a few days later he passed with high marks, as composer and pianist, graduating at less than 20 years of age.
After a few lessons with Eugen d'Albert, another student of Liszt, Dohnányi made his debut in Berlin in 1897 and was recognized at once as a performer of high merit. Similar success followed in Vienna and on a subsequent tour of Europe. He made his London debut at a Richter concert in Queen's Hall, with a notable performance of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4. He was among the first to conduct and popularize Bartók's more accessible music.
During the 1898 season, Dohnányi visited the United States, where he gained a reputation playing Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 for his American debut with the St. Louis Symphony. Unlike most famous pianists of the time, he did not limit himself to solo recitals and concertos, but also appeared in chamber music. In 1901 he completed his Symphony No. 1, his first orchestral work. Although he was heavily influenced by established contemporaries, notably Brahms, it displayed considerable technical skill in its own right.[4] Dohnányi married Elisabeth "Elsa" Kunwald (also a pianist), and they had a son, Hans, in 1902. Hans was to be the father of the German politician Klaus von Dohnányi and of the conductor Christoph von Dohnányi, longtime Music Director of the Cleveland Orchestra. Hans distinguished himself as a leader of the anti-Nazi resistance in Germany and was ultimately executed in the final stages of World War II. In addition to Hans, Dohnányi and Elsa Kunwald also had a daughter, Greta.[5]
Following an invitation by the violinist Joseph Joachim, a close friend of Brahms, Dohnányi taught at the Hochschule in Berlin from 1905 to 1915. There he wrote The Veil of Pierrette, Op. 18, and the Suite in F-sharp minor, Op. 19. Returning to Budapest, he appeared in a remarkable number of performances over the following decade, notably in the Beethoven sesquicentenial year of 1920/1921.[6]
Before World War I broke out, Dohnányi met and fell in love with a German actress (also described as a singer),[7] Elsa Galafrés, who was married to the Polish Jewish violinist Bronisław Huberman. They could not yet marry as their spouses refused to divorce them, but nonetheless, Dohnányi and Elsa Galafrés had a son, Matthew, in January 1917. Both later gained the divorces they sought and were married in June 1919. Dohnányi also adopted Johannes, Elsa's son by Huberman.[8]
During the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919, Dohnányi was appointed Director of the Budapest Academy, but a few months later the new interim government replaced him with the prominent violinist Jenő Hubay after Dohnányi had refused to dismiss the pedagogue and composer Zoltán Kodály from the Academy for his supposedly leftist political position. However in 1920, with Admiral Horthy becoming Regent of Hungary, Dohnányi was named Music Director of the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra and as such promoted the music of Béla Bartók, Zoltán Kodály, Leo Weiner and other contemporary Hungarian composers. That same 1920 season, he performed the complete piano works of Beethoven and recorded several of his works on the Ampico player-piano-roll apparatus. He gained renown as a teacher. His pupils included Andor Földes, Mischa Levitzki, Ervin Nyiregyházi, Géza Anda, Annie Fischer, Hope Squire, Helen Camille Stanley, Bertha Tideman-Wijers, Edward Kilenyi, Bálint Vázsonyi, Sir Georg Solti, Istvan Kantor, Georges Cziffra and Ľudovít Rajter (conductor and Dohnányi's godson). In 1933 he organized the first International Franz Liszt Piano Competition.
In 1937 Dohnányi met Ilona Zachár, who was married with two children. By this time, he had separated from his second wife Elsa Galafrés. He and Ilona travelled throughout Europe as husband and wife, but were not legally married until they settled in the United States. After Dohnányi's death, Ilona, in her biography, launched a campaign to quell his reputation as a Nazi sympathizer. Peter Halász continued this in an article titled "Persecuted Musicians in Hungary between 1919–1945", which portrayed him as a "victim" of Nazism,[9] and by James Grymes, who in his book called Dohnányi saw him as "a forgotten hero of the Holocaust resistance".
In 1934 Dohnányi was once again appointed Director of the Budapest Academy of Music, a post he held until 1943. According to the 2015 entry on Dohnányi in New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, "From 1939 much of [Dohnányi's] time was devoted to the fight against growing Nazi influences." By 1941 he had resigned his directorial post, rather than submit to the anti-Jewish legislation. In his orchestra, the Budapest Philharmonic [10] he managed to keep on all Jewish members until two months after the German invasion of Hungary in March 1944, when he disbanded the ensemble. In November 1944 he moved to Austria, a decision which drew criticism for many years. Musicologist James A. Grymes has defended Dohnányi's actions during the war, crediting his solidarity with Jewish colleagues and his actions to help some escape from Nazi-occupied countries.[11]
From 1949, Dohnányi taught for ten years at the Florida State University School of Music in Tallahassee. He became an honorary member of the Epsilon Iota chapter of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia fraternity there. He and his wife Ilona became American citizens in 1955.
In the United States, he continued to compose and became interested in American folk music. His last orchestral work (except for a 1957 revision of the Symphony No. 2) was American Rhapsody (1953), written for the sesquicentennial of Ohio University and including folk material, for example, "Turkey in the Straw", "On Top of Old Smokey" and "I am a poor wayfaring stranger".
His last public performance, on January 30, 1960, was at Florida State University, conducting the university orchestra in Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4, with his doctoral student, Edward R. Thaden, as soloist. After the performance, Dohnányi traveled to New York City to record some Beethoven piano sonatas and shorter piano pieces for Everest Records. He had previously recorded a Mozart concerto in the early 1930s in Hungary (No. 17, in G major, K. 453, playing and conducting the Budapest Philharmonic),and also his own Variations on a Nursery Tune, the second movement of his Ruralia hungarica (Gypsy Andante), and a few solo works (but no Beethoven sonatas) on 78 rpm. He had also recorded various other works, including Beethoven's Tempest Sonata and Haydn's F minor Variations, on early mono LPs.
Dohnányi died of pneumonia on 9 February 1960, in New York City, ten days after his final performance, and was buried in Tallahassee, Florida, where he had taught at the university for ten years.
Dohnányi's composing style was personal, but very conservative. His music largely subscribes to the Romantic idiom. Although he used elements of Hungarian folk music, he is not seen to draw on folk traditions in the way that Bartók or Kodály do. Some characterize his style as traditional mainstream Euro-Germanic in the Brahmsian manner (structurally more than in the way the music actually sounds) rather than specifically Hungarian, while others hear very little of Brahms in his music. The very best of his works may be his Serenade in C major for string trio, Op. 10 (1902) and Variations on a Nursery Tune for piano and orchestra, Op. 25 (1914). His Second symphony is a major work which he composed during the Second World War. It is uncharacteristically sombre, notably in the third movement, which is grotesque and dissonant.
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