IF YOU GO
What: Christoph von Dohnányi leading the Philharmonia of LondonWhen: 8 p.m. Thursday at the Arsht Center's Knight Concert Hall, 1300 Biscayne Blvd.; 8:30 p.m. Friday at Florida Atlantic University's Kaye Auditorium, 777 Glades Rd., Boca Raton.Cost: $18-$120, Miami; $20, BocaInfo: 877-311-7469; www.concertfla.orgIt's taken a long, successful lifetime for Christoph von Dohnányi to make his Miami debut. Yet for the last two years, local concertgoers have been the vicarious beneficiaries of the German conductor's leadership by virtue of the Cleveland Orchestra's Miami residency.
Yes, Franz Welser-Most is the Cleveland's current music director, but in many ways, the corporate tonal refinement and tightly disciplined ensemble are the legacy of the 78-year-old intellectual maestro who led the orchestra for almost two decades.
Dohnányi, for many the last great conductor of the immediate postwar generation, will visit South Florida this week with London's Philharmonia Orchestra, the final season event for the Concert Association of Florida. On Thursday night, Dohnányi will lead the Philharmonia in Mahler's Symphony No. 1 and Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts. And on Friday, they will appear at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, performing Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 and Schumann's Spring Symphony.
FAREWELL TOUR
This marks Dohnányi's farewell tour with the esteemed English orchestra, of which he has been principal conductor since 1997 and, previously, principal guest conductor for three seasons.
''The Philharmonia is a very successful orchestra with a tremendous responsibility to their tradition and to their quality,'' Dohnányi says from London. ``It's also one of the most enjoyable orchestras to work with and one of the most likeable orchestras in the sense it's a real family and a community.''
The Philharmonia is a relatively youthful ensemble but one with a fascinating history. It was founded in 1946 by producer Walter Legge as a studio orchestra, and the Philharmonia's string of masterful recordings under Herbert von Karajan, Wilhelm Furtwangler and Otto Klemperer remain touchstones.
And while the orchestra has also enjoyed relationships with subsequent non-German conductors such as Riccardo Muti, Giuseppe Sinopoli and Vladimir Ashkenazy, paradoxically, it remains unique as an English orchestra with a firm German musical heritage.
''This is an orchestra with a very different tradition,'' Dohnányi says. ``There was Klemperer. There was Karajan. There was Muti, Sinopoli, and then there was me. Sinopoli was different because he was also a composer with his own personality, but I think all the rest of them were in the same Central European tradition.''
CLEVELAND LEGACY
While Dohnányi and the Philharmonia will be in the spotlight this week, there's no doubt that on this side of the pond the conductor's legacy remains his acclaimed 18-year tenure with the Cleveland Orchestra.
Dohnányi first led the Clevelanders in 1981, taking over as music director three years later following Lorin Maazel's controversial decade.
The German conductor's meticulous attention to detail, veteran orchestra members say, restored the gleam and precision of the halcyon George Szell years and raised the ensemble again to eminence.
''I found the years working with [Dohnányi] to be very gratifying,'' says principal clarinetist Franklin Cohen, with the Cleveland since 1976. ``The orchestra really recaptured a refinement and the attention to detail that was present under Szell.
``He was very detail-oriented in all the ways that you would want. His attention to balances, tuning between sections, voicings -- he was a master at putting all those details together.''
''He made good music, and a lot of it was very special,'' says Richard Weiner, the Cleveland's principal percussionist, whose tenure dates back to the Szell era. ``Maestro Dohnányi would take a broader-brush view, but it was no less conscientious and often very inspiring. His approach was to give you the freedom to take chances with the music.''
Following his final Cleveland season in 2002, Dohnányi stayed away for five seasons, graciously not wanting to overshadow his young successor, Welser-Most. Last year, however, he returned to Cleveland for a benefit concert, an immensely gratifying reunion.
''They played so well, and we raised a lot of money, about $250,000,'' the conductor says.
WARTIME CHILDHOOD
Perhaps Dohnányi's tenacity and exacting musical perseverance are byproducts of his wartime childhood in Germany and the harrowing tragedy wrought on his loved ones by the Nazis. The conductor was born in 1929 to a prominent intellectual Berlin family -- grandson of composer Erno von Dohnányi, son of a famous jurist and nephew of celebrated theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Dohnányi's father, uncle and other family members were active in the German resistance and imprisoned in concentration camps before being executed in 1945 when the conductor was 15.
''It's still a little bit difficult to talk about,'' Dohnányi says. ``My mother was freed after a few months but not my father and uncle and my mother's brothers.
``It was quite a bit of suffering for the family. But I was a kid, and children have a lot of strength.''
He says he can't know for sure if his wartime experiences shaped him as a demanding disciplinarian on the podium. ''It's necessary that you are persistent,'' the conductor says. ``Friendly persistence.''
Dohnányi is looking forward to meeting up with several friends who have retired to South Florida this week as well as to performing at the Arsht Center's Knight Concert Hall. ''They are raving about the hall,'' Dohnányi says of the Cleveland musicians.
Even with such cornerstone Austro-German repertoire as Mendelssohn and Mahler, the conductor prefers not to repeat himself and keeps a high level of spontaneity in each performance. ''It changes always,'' he says. ``I mean I never do things the way I've done before.''
While he has seen enormous political and social upheaval and seismic changes in the musical world, Dohnányi is not one to side with the Cassandras who predict the always-postponed demise of classical music.
``We are, of course, living in a rapidly changing society, and globalization certainly plays a role in this. But I think as long as we have the scores of Mr. Mozart and Beethoven and Brahms, I don't believe in a crisis.''
