Donald Johanos

Donald Johanos was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on 10 February 1928, and trained as a violinist and conductor at the Eastman School in Rochester. For five years he played in the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, whose music director, Leinsdorf, steered him towards conducting.

His career as a conductor began in 1953, when he first conducted the orchestras of Altoona and Johnstown, in Pennsylvania. A year later, fellowships from the American Symphony Orchestra League and the Rockefeller Foundation enabled him to spend three years working alongside Ormandy, Beecham, Klemperer, Karajan and other masters. In 1957 he won the international conducting competition of the Netherlands Radio Union, which opened the doors of the Concertgebouw Orchestra. That same year he became associate conductor of the Dallas Symphony, a post he held as music director from 1962 to 1970. In 1971 he was appointed associate conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony, where he also conducted its chamber orchestra, and from 1979 he was in charge of the Honolulu Symphony and the Hawaii Opera Theatre.

His recordings with the Dallas Symphony, above all of Ives's Holidays, reveal a lyrical approach and a careful sense of structure, underpinned by rhythmic stability and sustained momentum.