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Christoph von Dohnanyi, the internationally renowned conductor best known for his long, harmonious tenure at the helm of the Cleveland Orchestra — a marriage between a symphony and its leader that was considered one of the most felicitous in classical music — died on Saturday in Munich. He was 95.
His death was announced by the Cleveland Orchestra.
A German of Hungarian extraction, Mr. Dohnanyi (pronounced DOKH-nahn-yee) served as Cleveland’s music director from 1984 to 2002, during which time the orchestra was widely described as one of the foremost in the world. At his death, he was the ensemble’s music director laureate.
A sought-after guest conductor with symphonies and opera companies around the world, Mr. Dohnanyi also held the title of honorary conductor for life of the Philharmonia Orchestra in London, where he was principal conductor from 1997 to 2008.
Mr. Dohnanyi was esteemed for his meticulous, unfussy interpretations; fealty to composers’ intent; and broad historical compass. He was associated in particular with the music of Germanic composers — his Brahms was especially admired — and he was also an ardent champion of 20th-century repertoire, a notoriously hard sell for contemporary American audiences.
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“Dohnanyi’s podium style is neither effusive à la Leonard Bernstein — whose method borders on the balletic — nor is it tautly economical in the tradition of Szell and Fritz Reiner,” the classical music critic Tim Page wrote in 1989 in a Newsday profile. (George Szell had reigned in Cleveland from 1946 until his death in 1970.)
