Ozawa, Seiji

Ozawa, Seiji, eminent Japanese conductor; b. Fenytien, China (of Japanese parents), Sept. 1, 1935. His father was a Buddhist, his mother a Christian. The family returned to Japan in 1944, at the end of the Japanese occupation of Manchuria. Ozawa began to study piano; at 16, he enrolled at the Toho School of Music in Tokyo, where he studied composition and conducting; one of his teachers, Hideo Saito, profoundly influenced his development as a musician; he graduated in 1959 with first prizes in composition and conducting. By that time he had already conducted concerts with the NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corp.) Sym. Orch. and the Japan Phil.; upon Saito’s advice, he went to Europe; to defray his expenses, he became a motor-scooter salesman for a Japanese firm, and promoted the product in Italy and France. In 1959 he won first prize at the international competition for conductors in Besançon,and was befriended by Charles Munch and Eugène Bigot; he then studied conducting with Bigot in Paris. Munch arranged for Ozawa to go to the U.S. and to study conducting at the Berkshire Music Center in Tanglewood; in 1960 he won its Koussevitzky Prize, and was awarded a scholarship to work with Karajan and the Berlin Phil. Bernstein heard him in Berlin and engaged him as an asst. conductor of the N.Y. Phil. On April 14, 1961, he made his first appearance with the orch. at Carnegie Hall; later that year, he accompanied Bernstein and the orch. on its tour of Japan. In 1962 he was invited to return as a guest conductor of the NHK Sym. Orch., but difficulties arose between him and the players, who objected to being commanded in an imperious manner by one of their own countrymen; still, he succeeded in obtaining engagements with other Japanese orchs., which he conducted on his periodic visits to his homeland.

After serving as sole asst. conductor of the N.Y. Phil. (1964–65), Ozawa’s career advanced significantly. From 1964 to 1968 he was music director of the Ravinia Festival, the summer home of the Chicago Sym. Orch. In 1969 he served as its principal guest conductor, and from 1965 to 1969 he also was music director of the Toronto Sym. Orch., which he took to England in 1965. From 1970 to 1976 he was music director of the San Francisco Sym. Orch., and then its music adviser (1976–77); took it on an extensive tour of Europe in 1977, garnering exceptional critical acclaim. Even before completing his tenure in San Francisco, he had begun a close association with the Boston Sym. Orch.; with Schuller, he became co-artistic director of its Berkshire Music Center in 1970; in 1972 he assumed the post of music adviser of the Boston Sym. Orch., and in 1973 he became its music director, and sole artistic director of the Berkshire Music Center, an astonishing event in American music annals, marking the first time an oriental musician was chosen solely by his merit to head the Boston Sym. Orch., which was for years since its foundation the exclusive preserve of German, and later French and Russian, conductors. In 1976 Ozawa took the Boston Sym. Orch. on a tour of Europe; in 1978 he escorted it to Japan, where those among Japanese musicians who had been skeptical about his abilities greeted his spectacular ascendance with national pride. Another unprecedented event took place in the spring of 1979, when Ozawa traveled with the Boston Sym. Orch. to the People’s Republic of China on an official cultural visit; in Aug. 1979 Ozawa and the orch. went on a tour of European music festivals. The centennial of the Boston Sym. Orch. in 1981 was marked by a series of concerts, under Ozawa’s direction, which included appearances in 14 American cities and a tour of Japan, France, Germany, Austria, and England. On Sept. 24, 1991, he conducted the Saito Kinen Orch. of Japan at its first appearance in the U.S. at N.Y.’s Carnegie Hall. On Sept. 5,1992, he inaugurated the Saito Kinen Festival in Matsumoto. He made his Metropolitan Opera debut in N.Y on Dec. 4,1992, conducting Eugene Onegin. In 1994 the Boston Sym. Orch.’s new concert hall at Tanglewood was named the Seiji Ozawa Hall in his honor.

After Ozawa consolidated his music directorship of the Boston Sym. Orch., he retained that position for 29 years, the longest tenure in the orch/s history. His last years at its helm did not equal his early success, but he contrived to demonstrate his capacity for interpretations of occasional brilliance. In 2002 he relinquished his Boston position to become chief conductor of the Vienna State Opera. He was married twice: first to the Japanese pianist Kyoko Edo, and second, to a Eurasian, Vera Ilyan. He received an honorary doctorate in music from the Univ. of San Francisco in 1971, and one from the New England Cons, of Music in 1982. His remarkable career was the subject of the documentary film Ozawa, which was telecast by PBS in 1987.

Bibliography

S. Tan, S. O. (Austin, Tex., 1997); L. Russell, S.: An Intimate Portrait of S. O. (Boston, 1998).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire