Around the Music Festival

Conductor Seiji Ozawa passed away on February 6 at his home in Tokyo due to heart failure at the age of 88. He was active internationally as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Vienna State Opera. In Japan, he served as “Honorary Conductor Laureate” of the New Japan Philharmonic, music advisor to the Mito Chamber Orchestra, and general director of the “Seiji Ozawa Matsumoto Festival” in Matsumoto City, Nagano Prefecture. In 2008, he was awarded the Order of Culture.

Born in Mukden (present-day Changchun), former Manchuria. He was named “Seiji” after his father’s comrades, Seishiro Itagaki and Kanji Ishihara, who led the Manchurian Incident.

After the war, he returned to Japan and went to Seijo Gakuen High School in 1951, but he enrolled in a music school organized by Hideo Saito, and the following year he entered Toho Girls’ High School for Music, which was established by Saito’s initiative, as a first-year student.

In 1958, he failed to pass the examination for the “French Government Scholarship,” but he showed his natural energy and raised funds to go to Europe with the help of the fathers of his classmates from his days at Seijo Gakuen. With a scooter and a guitar, he arranged to be taken on a cargo ship and traveled to France. His experiences were later compiled in a book titled “Boku no Musical Samurai Shugyo”.

The following year, he won the first prize at the 9th Besançon International Competition for Conductors, which brought him to the forefront of attention. The following year, he participated in the Tanglewood Music Festival held every summer by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, whose music director is Charles Munch, who was a judge at the competition. This led to his selection as assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra led by Leonard Bernstein in 1961, and he accompanied the orchestra on its tour of Japan.

That same year, 1961, he was also appointed conductor of the NHK Symphony Orchestra, one of Japan’s leading orchestras. However, emotional conflicts with the orchestra members erupted the following year, and the orchestra boycotted a concert, an unprecedented situation that led him to resign as conductor and move to the United States to find a new way of life.

After moving to the U.S., his activities rapidly expanded: in 1964, he was quickly selected as music director of the Ravinia Music Festival organized by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, a success that made his name known throughout the U.S. That same year, he was also selected as music director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in Canada (-1968).

In 1966, he conducted the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra for the first time, and in 1970, he was appointed Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony (-1976) and Music Director of the Tanglewood Music Festival, rapidly expanding his activities.

Meanwhile, in Japan, when the Fuji Sankei Group disbanded the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra in 1972, he and his colleagues, including conductor and composer Naozumi Yamamoto, worked to establish the New Japan Philharmonic as a self-managed orchestra with members of the Japan Philharmonic at its core.

In 1973, when he was 38 years old, a major turning point came. He became the 13th Music Director of the prestigious Boston Symphony Orchestra. He would serve as music director for an unprecedented nearly 30 years, until 2002. In honor of his accomplishments, “Seiji Ozawa Hall” was built at the Tanglewood Music Festival.

In 1984, to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the death of Hideo Saito, Ozawa and his senior conductor Kazuyoshi Akiyama held the “Saito Hideo Memorial Concert” at the request of over 100 students of Saito’s students. This later led to the formation of the “Saito Kinen Orchestra. Since 1992, Ozawa has served as the orchestra’s music director.

He conducted Beethoven’s “Ninth Symphony” at the 1998 Nagano Olympics, which was broadcast by satellite between the opening ceremony site and cities on five continents (Beijing, New York, Sydney, Berlin, and Cape Town). In January 2002, he became the first Japanese conductor to conduct the “New Year’s Concert” of the Vienna Philharmonic. That fall, he was appointed Music Director of the Vienna State Opera (-2007).

However, his health began to fail at the end of 2005, and in 2006 he was diagnosed with herpes zoster, chronic maxillary sinusitis, and keratitis, and temporarily suspended his activities in Vienna. He resumed his activities, but resigned as music director of the Vienna State Opera in 2007.

In 2008, he was awarded the Order of Cultural Merit. However, in 2010, he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer and underwent a total esophagectomy, and in 2011 he underwent surgery on his deteriorating back. His activities gradually decreased, but in 2015, the Saito Kinen Festival Matsumoto restarted as the “Seiji Ozawa Matsumoto Festival”.

In 2015, he received the Kennedy Center Honor Award, the first Japanese ever to receive such an award, and in 2016, the album of Ravel’s opera “Children and Magic,” which he conducted, won the 58th “Grammy Award: Best Opera Recording,” and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra gave him the title of “honorary member He was also awarded the title of “Honorary Member” of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.

PHOTO：Medici.tv