Ernő Dohnányi

Ernő Dohnányi (Hungarian: Dohnányi Ernő; 27 July 1877 – 9 February 1960) was a Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher. He was born in Pozsony in the Kingdom of Hungary (then part of Austria-Hungary; today Bratislava, Slovakia) and became one of the leading representatives of the late-Romantic tradition in Hungarian musical life, while also promoting modern Hungarian composers.

Dohnányi began studying music at the age of six with his father, a mathematics professor and amateur cellist. From 1885 to 1893 he studied piano and organ with Károly Forstner, organist of Pozsony Cathedral, and later studied harmony with him as well. He entered gymnasium in 1886 and gave an early public performance on 3 November the same year in a Mozart piano quartet; his first solo concert followed on 28 December 1890, featuring works by Chopin, Mendelssohn, and Liszt alongside his own compositions. During his school years he also served as an organist in local churches and at gymnasium masses.

From 1893 to 1897 he studied at the Academy of Music in Budapest with István Thomán and Hans von Koessler; Béla Bartók was among his classmates. His early Piano Quintet in C minor gained the approval of Johannes Brahms, marking a significant early breakthrough. In 1897 he took lessons with Eugen d’Albert, and debuted as a pianist in Berlin and Vienna; he subsequently toured widely in Western Europe (1898–1905), the United States (1899), and Russia (1907).

Dohnányi made his conducting debut in 1902, leading his overture Zrínyi with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. From 1905 to 1915 he taught piano at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin (professor from 1908). In 1919 he became director of the Liszt Academy in Budapest during the Hungarian Soviet Republic, and from 1919 to 1944 he served as conductor of the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra. Between 1921 and 1927 he toured Europe and the United States as pianist and conductor, including author concerts; he was chief conductor of the New York State Symphony Orchestra and a guest conductor of Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw Orchestra. In 1928 he gave his 1500th concert.

From 1928 he taught at the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest and served as its director from 1934 to 1943. In 1933 he organized the first International Ferenc Liszt Piano Competition. He was also music director of Hungarian Radio (1931–1944) and founded the Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in 1943. In performance and programming he strongly advocated Hungarian composers, notably Bartók and Zoltán Kodály, and he was considered an outstanding interpreter of Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, and Liszt.

Dohnányi opposed cooperation with Miklós Horthy’s regime and criticized its ties to fascism; according to Kodály, he helped save hundreds of Jewish musicians from arrest and deportation. In 1944, after the arrest of his son Hans (involved in the 20 July plot) and amid his objections to the expulsion of Jewish musicians from the academy and orchestra, he was stripped of all posts. On 24 November 1944 he left Hungary with Ilona Záchar (later his wife) and her two children, and after a brief stay in Vienna settled in Neukirchen am Walde in Upper Austria.

In 1945 he was invited by the American military administration to conduct the Bruckner Orchestra in Linz and received an engagement for the Salzburg Festival, which was later cancelled for political reasons. In October 1945 a BBC World Service broadcast accused him of facilitating the handover of Hungarian artists to the Gestapo; despite a statement from Hungary’s justice minister that Dohnányi was not on the list of war criminals, the American authorities did not protect him from the allegations. In 1946 the Hungarian government officially placed him on a list of criminals due to his membership in the Hungarian senate and sought his extradition; that year he learned of the deaths of his sons. He moved to Argentina in 1948, and from 1949 lived in the United States, receiving US citizenship in 1955 after an investigation found accusations against him to be unfounded.

In the United States he became a professor of composition at the Florida State University School of Music in Tallahassee. He died in New York while recording his Piano Concerto No. 2 for the Everest label. Among his many pupils were Géza Anda, Annie Fischer, Andor Földes, Boris Goldovsky, Edward Kilenyi, Georg Solti, György Cziffra, Ernő Szegedi, and his grandson Christoph von Dohnányi. He was also known for a technical collection for pianists, “Essential Finger Exercises.”

Health problems repeatedly affected his life: he suffered thromboses in 1934, 1940, and 1943, each causing long periods of hospitalization; he associated these enforced pauses with major compositional achievements, including the Sextet in C major, the cantata Cantus vitae, and Suite en valse. As a composer he remained a follower of the late-Romantic lineage, especially Brahms, while incorporating elements of Hungarian folk music in some works, notably Ruralia hungarica (Op. 32, 1926). He also wrote an autobiographical work, Message to Posterity (published 1960).

Dohnányi’s output included stage works such as Der Schleier der Pierrette (pantomime, 1910), Tante Simons (1913), A Vajda Tornya (1922), Der Tenor (1929), Sacred Fire (1934), Five Advantages of Life (1943), and Portrait of a Ballerina (1952), as well as three symphonies (1896, 1901, 1944), the overture Zrínyi (1896), piano concertos (1898, 1947), Variations on a Nursery Song (Op. 25, 1914), violin concertos (1915, 1950), chamber music including string quartets and piano quintets, choral works, cantatas, a Mass, Stabat Mater, and folk-song arrangements. He received numerous honors, including Royal prizes in 1897, awards from the Hungarian government, international distinctions, and later commemorations such as a Budapest symphony orchestra bearing his name from 1989.

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