BMC - Magyar Zenei Információs Központ

Name:	Dohnányi, Ernő
Place of Birth:	Pozsony (Bratislava)
Date of Birth:	1877
	Composer

July 27, 1877 Bratislava - February 9, 1960 New York

At the turn of the century Ernst von Dohnányi dominated the musical life of his native Hungary. Born on 27th July 1877, young Ernő, as he was called, was quick to make a name for himself as a pianist and composer. When he was sixteen he attracted the attention of the elderly Brahms. By the time he embarked on his musical studies at Budapest he had already written several musical works. By 1897, having perfected his technique under Eugen d'Albert, he was ready to begin his highly successful career as a pianist, which took him to America at the age of only 23.

His success may be measured by the fact that when Bartók, who was four years younger, made his début as an equally brilliant pianist, he was hailed as a "second Dohnányi". Dohnányi's composing career had an equally auspicious start: in 1897 his first symphony and his Overture Zrinyi won hime the royal prize at the celebration of Hungary's millennium.

In 1905 Dohnányi took over a piano class at the Berlin Musikhochschule, but the outbreak of the First World War forced him to return to Budapest, where he and his friends Bartók and Kodály were appointed to take charge of music in the short-lived Hungarian Republic in 1919. Two years later he took over the presidency of the Hungarian Philharmonic Society and in 1923 the golden jubilee of the unification of Buda and Pest was celebrated at a festival concert which included the first performances of his Festival Overture, Kodály's Psalmus Hungaricus and Bartók's Dance Suite. There followed a prolonged stay in the USA until 1928, when he returned to Hungary as a university teacher. He was made general music director of Hungarian Radio in 1931, and three years later succeeded Jenő Hubay as principal of the Budapest Conservatoire.

In 1948 Dohnányi had to leave Hungary for good, and after stays in Austria, England and Argentina, settled in the USA, where he taught at the Florida State College; he was made its "composer in residence". He also continued to perform widely as a pianist. He died on 9th February 1960, at the age of 82.

Dohnányi's output includes works in every musical genre from chamber music for various combinations to opera. His first concerto was written for the piano in 1899 and dedicated to d'Albert, but he did not confine himself to his own instrument: there followed a Konzertstück for cello and orchestra Op. 12 (1906), the Variations on a Nursery Song Op. 25 (1914) and the Violin Concerto Op. 27 (1920). He wrote another piano concerto and violin concerto, and his last work in the genre is a Concertino for harp, composed in 1952.

Dohnányi is seldom performed or recorded nowadays. This has more to do with the style of his works than with their intrinsic merit. Unlike his compatriot Bartók, he never felt impelled to venture into the musical unknown or to write revolutionary avant-garde music; his creative inclinations remained rooted in the late romantic tradition. Like Richard Strauss, he felt that the formal range and musical idioms of Brahms, Wagner and Dvorak were far from fully exploited. Strauss, however, underwent a change from the "classicism" of his early works to the comparative novelty of the tone poems, and this did not happen with Dohnányi.