Japanese conductor Seiji Ozawa dies at age 88

He was the first Asian music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra

TOKYO -- Japanese conductor Seiji Ozawa, who served as the music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, died of heart failure at his home in Tokyo on Tuesday. He was 88.

Ozawa was born in the former Manchuria, now part of northeastern China. After a rugby injury, he gave up on becoming a pianist and instead went on to learn the basics of conducting under musician and professor Hideo Saito at the Toho Gakuen School of Music in Tokyo.

After graduating from Toho Gakuen College of Drama and Music, Ozawa left for Europe and won first place at the Besancon Competition for young conductors in France in 1959. He then studied under the conductor and composer Herbert von Karajan and was invited by conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein to become assistant conductor at the New York Philharmonic in the United States.

In 1973, Ozawa became the first Asian music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, also serving as music director at the prestigious Vienna State Opera from 2002 to 2010.

He formed an orchestra with fellow musicians under Saito in 1984. He began the Saito Kinen Orchestra, commemorating his former teacher's death, and led the Saito Kinen Festival Matsumoto, now known as the Seiji Ozawa Matsumoto Festival, in the city of Matsumoto in Nagano prefecture, where he conducted the orchestra and opera.

In 2016, the album "L'Enfant et les Sortileges" ("The Child and the Spells"), a live recording of an opera performance at this festival, won a Grammy Award.

While on the podium of famous orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic and the Vienna Philharmonic, he also presided over chamber music academies and music schools, devoting himself to training young musicians. In Japan, he was very close with the New Japan Philharmonic and the Mito Chamber Orchestra.

Ozawa received numerous accolades both nationally and internationally, including the Order of Culture in Japan as well as the French Legion of Honor. In 2010, he suspended his musical activities to undergo surgery for esophageal cancer. He continued to conduct for as long as he could.

First published at Nikkei Asia, February 9, 2024