Seiji Ozawa

Conductor

• Born: September 1, 1935
• Place of Birth: Fengtian, Manchuria (now Shenyang, China)
• Died: February 6, 2024
• Place of Death: Tokyo, Japan

With his solid baton technique and dance-like body movements, Seiji Ozawa was one of the first Asian musicians to achieve international recognition. He was the music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra for twenty-nine years, the longest serving music director in orchestra history.

Background

Seiji Ozawa was born to Japanese parents Kaisaku and Sakura Ozawa on September 1, 1935, in Fengtian, Manchuria (now Shenyang, China). He was the third of their four children. The family moved to Beijing, China, in 1936 and returned to Japan in 1941. Ozawa showed interest in music from an early age and began music lessons at the age of seven. By the time he entered Seijo Gakuen Junior High School in Tokyo, Japan, in 1948, he had been taking piano lessons with Noboru Toyomasu, an authority on German music.

Ozawa had hoped to become a concert pianist and enrolled in the Toho School of Music at the age of sixteen to pursue his chosen career. After breaking two of his fingers playing rugby, he sought a different career path within the world of music. In 1951, Ozawa heard Leonid Kreutzer conduct and play Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 with the Japan Symphony Orchestra (now NHK Symphony Orchestra). Inspired by this performance, Ozawa decided to become a conductor. He studied under Hideo Saito, a renowned cellist and conductor, at the Toho School and gained experience at the NHK Symphony as well as the Japan Philharmonic. In 1955, Ozawa advanced to the college division of the Toho School.

World-Renowned Conductor

After graduating in 1959, Ozawa planned to study abroad. He supported himself by selling Japanese motor scooters. In June, Ozawa heard about the Ninth International Competition for Young Conductors in Besançon, France. Although he could not complete the application by the deadline, he entered the competition with the help of the American Embassy and won the first prize in September 1959.

Charles Münch, a judge for the competition and conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO), advised Ozawa to attend the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood in western Massachusetts the next summer. There, he won the Koussevitzky Prize for outstanding student conductor. In the fall of 1960, Ozawa became a student of Herbert von Karajan of the Berlin Philharmonic. In Berlin, Ozawa caught the attention of Leonard Bernstein, who appointed Ozawa assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic for the 1961–62 season.

On April 14, 1961, Ozawa made his professional debut with the New York Philharmonic. That same year he became conductor of the NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo, but his relationship with the company did not work out. He returned to New York in 1963.

In the summer of 1963, Ozawa appeared at the Ravinia Festival, the summer residence of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, as a last-minute replacement for conductor Georges Prêtre. After hearing Ozawa’s first rehearsal, Earle Ludgin, the chairman of the festival association, offered him the position of Ravinia’s first music director. This appointment lasted from 1964 to 1968. In 1965, Ozawa became music director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, where he stayed until 1969. In the summer of 1969, he made his operatic debut at the Salzburg Festival in Austria, with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Cosi fan Tutte. From 1970 to 1976, he served as music director of the San Francisco Symphony.

In 1970, Ozawa was appointed co-artistic director at Tanglewood. In 1972, he became music adviser for the BSO. The next year, he became the orchestra’s director and held that position for the next twenty-nine years. In the early 1980s, he began appearing at major opera houses, including the world premiere of Olivier Messiaen’s Saint François d’Assise at the Paris Opera in 1983. By the 1990s, Ozawa had appeared as a guest conductor of major European orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, and the Orchestre de Paris. Ozawa made numerous recordings of various composers, ranging from Beethoven’s symphonies to Toru Takemitsu’s November Steps.

In 2002, Ozawa was invited to conduct the New Year Concert of the Vienna Philharmonic. In the same year, he left the BSO to become principal conductor of the Vienna State Opera. During this time, he favored new productions over standard repertory fare. His 2004 tour with the Vienna Philharmonic included conducting three performances at Carnegie Hall. He also conducted performances at Tanglewood in 2006 and the Metropolitan Opera in 2008.

In January 2010, six months before the expiration of his contract with the opera house, Ozawa announced that he had been diagnosed with esophageal cancer. He canceled all engagements to receive surgery and chemotherapy treatment. He came back to the podium in September 2010, conducting the Saito Kinen Orchestra, which he had founded in Matsumoto, Japan, and appeared with the same orchestra at Carnegie Hall in New York in December 2010. However, back surgery forced him to cancel his 2011 Carnegie Hall appearances.

Ozawa convalesced for the better part of two years. During that time, he reconnected with family and took occasional engagements, often with other conductors. By May 2014, Ozawa was able to conduct half of a concert at a time. One result of this long period of rest was a new depth to his conducting.

In 2016, Ozawa and novelist Haruki Murakami published Absolutely on Music: Conversations with Seiji Ozawa, translated by Jay Rubin. The book captured six of conversations the pair had in 2010 and 2011 while listening to recordings of orchestral performances.

In April 2016 Ozawa briefly returned to the Berlin Philharmonic and Seiji Ozawa International Academy Switzerland. However, Ozawa fell ill again and canceled his summer performances with Tanglewood to recover. He eventually returned to conducting and took on a reduced workload at the Seiji Ozawa Music Academy. In early 2018 Ozawa was hospitalized for several weeks to treat a heart condition but recovered.

Ozawa died of heart failure on February 6, 2024, at his home in Tokyo. He was eighty-eight years old.

Impact

Ozawa became a conductor in both North America and Europe when there were no Asian conductors for major orchestras, and achieved great success. He was remembered by Boston Globe music critic Richard Dyer as a young conductor who “displayed the greatest physical gift for conducting of anyone in his generation, and a range and accuracy of musical memory that struck awe and envy into the hearts of most musicians who encountered it.” Among many awards and honors, Ozawa won a Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording (2015), two Emmy Awards (1976, 1994), and Japan's inaugural Inouye Award for lifetime achievement (1994). He was named Musical America's musician of the year 1998 and an officer in the Legion of Honor in 2008. He also held honorary degrees from Harvard University, the New England Conservatory of Music, the Sorbonne, the University of Massachusetts, and Wheaton College. The BSO named the chamber-music hall at Tanglewood after him when the building opened in 1994. Ozawa received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2015, and his eighty-fifth birthday in 2020 was formally designated Seiji Ozawa Day in Boston.

Ozawa made contributions to the musical culture of China and Japan as well. He was the honorary conductor laureate of the New Japan Philharmonic. He went on a concert tour in China with the BSO in March 1979, and after this historic event, he visited China frequently to conduct orchestras and give master classes. On the tenth anniversary of Saito’s death in 1984, Ozawa organized memorial concerts in Tokyo and Osaka, Japan. For this occasion, more than one hundred of Saito’s former students gathered to perform, and these concerts became the beginning of the Saito Kinen Orchestra. With this ensemble as the resident orchestra, Ozawa launched the Saito Kinen Festival in Matsumoto, Japan, in September 1992.

In addition to conducting and recording, Ozawa was devoted to furthering others' music education. He established the Seiji Ozawa Music Academy Opera Project in 2000, Seiji Ozawa International Academy Switzerland in 2005, the Seiji Ozawa Music Academy Orchestra Project in 2009, and the Ozawa International Chamber Music Academy Okushiga, Japan, in 2011.

Personal Life

Ozawa was survived by his brothers, Mikio and Toshio Ozawa; his wife, Vera; their two children, son Yukiyoshi and daughter Seira; and a grandson.

Bibliography

“Boston Proclaims Japan Conductor’s Birthday ‘Seiji Ozawa Day.’” The Japan Times, 3 Sept. 2020, www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2020/09/03/music/boston-seiji-ozawa-day/. Accessed 6 Aug. 2024.

Eichler, Jeremy. “For Seiji Ozawa, a Warm BSO Reunion.” The Boston Globe, 13 May 2014, www.bostonglobe.com/arts/music/2014/05/12/for-seiji-ozawa-warm-reunion-with-bso/Je5WKA20BGYfLMuDJOmO9L/story.html. Accessed 6 Aug. 2024.

Hart, Philip. Conductors: A New Generation. Scribner’s, 1979.

Jampol, Joshua. “Seiji Ozawa, or the Art of Managing the Orchestra.” Living Opera. Oxford UP, 2010, pp. 245–60.

Oestreich, James R. “Seiji Ozawa, a Captivating, Transformative Conductor, Dies at 88.” The New York Times, 9 Feb. 2024, www.nytimes.com/2024/02/09/arts/music/seiji-ozawa-dead.html. Accessed 6 Aug. 2024.

Ozawa, Seiji. Absolutely on Music. Interviews by Haruki Murakami, translated by Jay Rubin. Random House, 2016.

“Seiji Ozawa: Music Director Laureate.” Boston Symphony Orchestra, www.bso.org/conductors/seiji-ozawa.aspx. Accessed 6 Aug. 2024.

Sharpe, Roderick L., and Jeanne Koekkoek Stierman. Maestros in America: Conductors in the Twenty-First Century. Scarecrow, 2008.