Born in Berlin, Christoph von Dohnányi began to study law in Munich. After two years he chose to join the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München to study composition, piano and conducting. At the end of his studies he was awarded the Richard Strauss Prize for Conducting by the City of Munich and continued to study with his grandfather, Ernst von Dohnányi, at Florida State University.

In 1953 Christoph von Dohnányi was hired as repetiteur and conductor at the Frankfurt Opera by Sir Georg Solti. At the age of 27 he moved to Lübeck where he became Germany’s youngest General Music Director, before becoming Chief Conductor at first in Kassel and then of the WDR Symphony Orchestra in Cologne. From 1968 he served as General Music Director in Frankfurt and, from 1972, as Director of the Frankfurt Opera. From 1977 to 1984 he was Intendant and Chief Conductor of Hamburg Opera. In Frankfurt and Hamburg he aimed to balance traditional opera productions with innovative music theatre.

In December 1981 Christoph von Dohnányi first conducted The Cleveland Orchestra. He was Music Director Designate from 1982 to 1984 and served as its sixth Music Director from September 1984 to August 2002, becoming the orchestra’s first Music Director Laureate from then on. During Dohnányi’s tenure, they toured extensively around the US, Asia and Europe, performing concerts for the Salzburg Festival, BBC Proms and Edinburgh Festival, and were in residence at Carnegie Hall, New York for a number of years. In 1998, they performed in China for the first time in the orchestra’s history. His many recordings with the orchestra include the complete symphonies of Beethoven, Brahms and Schumann, and Wagner’s Die Walküre and Das Rheingold. During Dohnányi’s time as Music Director, Severance Hall, The Cleveland Orchestra’s home, was renovated and extended to bring back one of America’s biggest organs into the musical life of Cleveland.

Christoph von Dohnányi held the position of Chief Conductor of the NDR Symphony Orchestra from September 2004 to July 2010. He conducted regular subscription season concerts in North Germany and they toured extensively through Europe. Dohnányi and the orchestra toured South America where they were subsequently voted Best Orchestra and Best Conductor 2005 by the Association of Critics of Buenos Aires. In March 2007 they gave two concerts in New York’s Carnegie Hall and one concert in the United Nations General Assembly Hall celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome followed by a tour to Japan in May 2007. In October 2008 they gave a series of concerts in Taiwan and China. He concluded his tenure with a complete cycle of all Beethoven’s symphonies in May 2010.

Christoph von Dohnányi is also in demand as a guest conductor in the US and regularly conducts the Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, The Philadelphia, New York Philharmonic and The Cleveland orchestras. In Europe, he has been a guest conductor with all the major orchestras including the Orchestre de Paris, Berlin Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw, Israel Philharmonic and Zurich Tonhalle orchestras. A regular guest conductor at the Zurich Opera House since the early 1990s, he has led new productions there, most recently in May 2011, of Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron, Richard Strauss’s Salome, Ariadne auf Naxos, Elektra, Die schweigsame Frau and Die Frau ohne Schatten, Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer, Mozart’s Idomeneo and a double bill of Bartók’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle and Stravinsky’s Oedipus rex.

Christoph von Dohnányi’s discography with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra includes Fidelio, Wozzeck, Lulu, Erwartung, Salome, Der fliegende Holländer and symphonic works by Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky. He has recorded the violin concertos of Glass and Schnittke with Gidon Kremer, the Dvor?ák Piano Concerto with András Schiff and orchestral transcriptions of chamber music by Brahms and Mahler. As a regular guest at the Salzburg Festival, Christoph von Dohnányi has led the Vienna Philharmonic in several new productions including Salome, Der Rosenkavalier, Così fan tutte, Die Zauberflöte, Erwartung, Duke Bluebeard’s Castle and Ariadne auf Naxos, as well as the world premières of Henze’s Die Bassariden and Cerha’s Baal.