Johannes Dengler was born in 1973, the son of a Chilean mother and a German father. He grew up in Bavaria in the Chiemsee area. He started his horn studies with Josef Crump and completed his studies in Munich with Karl Kolbinger and Johannes Ritzkowsky.
Since 1993 he has held the position of principal horn with the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. Since then he has also played regularly as principal in other top European orchestras, including the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Tonhalleorchester Zurich, and the Orchestra dell’Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome. He has played under the batons of nearly all the great conductors of our time, including Carlos Kleiber, Zubin Mehta, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Lorin Maazel, Claudio Abbado, Günter Wand, Georg Solti, Charles Dutoit, Simon Rattle, James Levine, Mariss Jansons and many others.
In 2004 he was awarded the honorary title of „Bayerischer Kammervirtuose“. In 2012 he won the "Echo Klassik" prize for his recording of Brahms’ horn trio on the natural horn.
Recently he played the horn solo of Tchaikovsky’s 5th symphony as a guest of the Berliner Philharmoniker conducted by Daniel Barenboim, a concert broadcasted live on TV worldwide.
He has a special artistic relationship with Kent Nagano which is documented among other things, in a recording of Robert Schumann’s "Konzertstück".