Ernő Dohnányi - Violin Concerto No. 1 in D-Minor Op. 27 Full Orchestral Score (Ludwig, Falletta)

Ernst von Dohnányi - Erste Violinkonzert
Completed in 1915

Soloist: Michael Ludwig
Conductor: JoAnn Falletta
Orchestra: Royal Scottish National Orchestra

Ernő Dohnányi (1877-1960) was a pianist, composer, and pedagogue. His life story has many winding roads seeing as how he was born in Hungary and died in Florida. He survived the tumultuous early 20th century in a land that, after WWI, was changing with extreme rapidity. Before WWI's end, Dohnányi spent much time in Berlin teaching at the Hochschule there, but he returned to Hungary where the political situation was very unstable.

Many of the jagged paths in Dohnányi's life came from his refusal to bow to persecuting forces that tried to pressure him into taking actions alien to his principles. In the strange time that Hungary was a Soviet Republic decades before its conquest by Stalin, he was pressured to dismiss Zoltán Kodály, his fellow composer, from his post over his political views. Dohnányi refused and was replaced. This type of incident would occur again and again during WW2 as Dohnányi stepped forward to protect Jewish instructors at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music. He also helped Jews emigrate to the US. Both Zoltán Kodály and Tibor Serly credited Dohnányi with his efforts to save Jewish lives.

After the war, he moved to Florida to teach. He taught in Tallahassee where he was buried after dying of pneumonia in New York City.

As a figure in music, Dohnányi reminds of Bortkiewicz in that he never leaps into the experimental mode of Bartók, nor did he join the neoclassical movement or any of the other new 20th century musical movements. He remained firmly rooted in the Romantic Era, though, like Bortkiewicz, he managed to carve out his own style. Sometimes one can hear Schumann, Brahms, or even Bach at times, but after listening for quite some time - one can only throw his or her arms up and say "It just sounds like Dohnányi."

IMSLP: https://imslp.org/wiki/Violin_Concert...)