Call Him a ‘Past’ Master : Music: Christoph von Dohnanyi, who will bring the Cleveland Orchestra to Costa Mesa, says understanding earlier works takes effort.

Cleveland Orchestra music director Christoph von Dohnanyi speaks calmly as he turns one of the basic ideas in classical music programming on its ear.

“Our reaction to the music of the past is much more in jeopardy of being wrong than our reaction to music of our day,” Dohnanyi said in a recent phone interview from Dallas, where he was conducting the Cleveland before its Costa Mesa performances on Tuesday and Wednesday for the Orange County Philharmonic Society (and its UCLA date on Oct. 26).

“Our music is very close to us,” he said. “We know how to handle it. We have to make a tremendous effort to understand the music of the last century.”

For instance, when he set out to conduct Schumann’s “Rhenish” Symphony for the first time with the Cleveland in 1987, Dohnanyi studied several books by and about Schumann, including a psychological study of the composer, in addition to the score.

“Everything we think about gemutlichkeit (Viennese coziness) is wrong,” Dohnanyi said. “There is nothing about Schumann that is gemutlichkeit . The man was deathly sick, politically involved . . . put into prison. There was no gemutlichkeit about him . . . .

“So leaning back and enjoying the 19th Century is totally wrong. But I can’t blame people. It takes tremendous effort to understand it.”

Dohnanyi, who is the grandson of the Hungarian composer Ernst von Dohnanyi, was born in Berlin in 1929 and grew up in a prominent, educated family that strongly resisted the rise of Nazism in Germany. In fact, his father and two uncles were executed in 1944 for having participated in an unsuccessful plot to assassinate Hitler.

As did many German conductors, Dohnanyi began learning his trade in the opera house, first working at the Frankfurt Opera under Georg Solti in 1952. He became artistic and music director of the company in 1968, and he remained until 1978, when he became artistic director and principal conductor of the Hamburg State Opera.

In 1984, he took the reins in Cleveland , where he is generally credited with restoring the glory of the orchestra in its George Szell years, after a decade of decline under the leadership of Lorin Maazel. He spends approximately half the year there and the other half in Germany with his wife, soprano Silja, and their three children.

Unlike so many other conductors today, Dohnanyi has no regular posts with other orchestras, although he does guest conduct frequently in Europe. Because of this, and his dual residencies, he does not feel cut off from the international musical world. “For my private life, what really matters are the few people and the orchestra I’m with,” he said.

The orchestra’s Performing Arts Center concerts next week will be its first in Orange County since 1988. Dohnanyi, however, remembers the Center only vaguely. “I think I like it,” he said, “but I’m not so good at remembering places as remembering music.”

His affinity for contemporary music will be evident here: He has programmed Shulamit Ran’s Concert Piece, with pianist Alan Feinberg on Tuesday, and Donald Erb’s Concerto for Brass on Wednesday.

Ran won the Pulitzer Prize for music this year for her “Symphony,” which had its premiere in 1990. The piece by the Israeli-born composer, however, dates from 1970, when she was 21.

Dohnanyi describes the work as “a very gifted piece” with “lots of colors (and) a rather aggressive pulse once you go into it. It certainly shows talent and a sense of drama.”

Erb’s piece was commissioned by the Chicago Symphony to commemorate the death of its manager, John Edwards, and had its premiere in 1987. “But about the same time Erb’s father died,” Dohnanyi added, “so he put in a Bach chorale (as) a little idea ‘in memoriam.’ ”

The contemporary works will be bracketed Tuesday by music of Beethoven and Strauss, on Wednesday by Schubert and Stravinsky. But in his programming, Dohnanyi said, “I’m actually not concerned with what ‘fits.’ I think that if you find pieces that are worthy to be played, you should do them.”

Even so, he said he looks forward on Tuesday to playing a concert staple such as Beethoven’s “Egmont” Overture “differently.”

“This piece has always bothered me,” he said. “I have struggled with the introduction for long time. I think all the famous and great conductors have taken the introduction too slow and the allegro too fast. I think the pulse of the piece is much clearer once you take the introduction in a tempo which actually fits into the first allegro tempo. This is not to say I’m right, but I am convinced.”

Dohnanyi said he is conducting Strauss’ “Ein Heldenleben” because of “the epilogue, which should be really beautiful . . . . I once talked to (conductor Herbert von) Karajan, who had talked to Strauss about ‘Heldenleben,’ ” he said. “It has to be fleet and flowing, as Strauss did it himself, (and) not be too ‘heroic.’ ”

Dohnanyi, like many other musicians, believes that concert touring is “a dreadful life.”

“You go to hotels, you conduct, then you go back to sleep,” he said. “It’s not much fun. It’s really work.”

Christoph von Dohnanyi will conduct the Cleveland Orchestra on Tuesday and Wednesday at 8 p.m. at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. The program on Tuesday will include Beethoven’s “Egmont” Overture, Shulamit Ran’s Concert Piece and Strauss’ “Ein Heldenleben.” The Wednesday program will include the Overture to Schubert’s “Alfonso und Estrella,” Donald Erb’s Concerto for Brass and the complete “Firebird” by Stravinsky. The concerts are sponsored by the Orange County Philharmonic Society. Tickets: $16 to $47. Information: (714) 646-6277.