Seiji Ozawa thrilled classical music fans all over the world well into his old age. Now the successful conductor died.
Tokyo – The former music director of the Vienna State Opera died of heart failure at his home in Tokyo on February 6th, as his management announced to Japanese media on Friday (February 9th). He was 88 years old.
“One hundred thousand volt conductor” Seiji Ozawa dies at the age of 88
The Japanese man with many laugh lines was often described as a “bundle of energy” or a “hundred-thousand-volt conductor.” For decades the maestro conducted only a few operas, but with great success. As leader of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1973 to 2002, Ozawa set standards.
As music director of the Vienna State Opera, he devoted himself primarily to opera and demonstrated his broad knowledge of everything from Mozart to Krenek. Recently, however, the Japanese have increasingly been plagued by health problems. The baritone Paolo Gavanelli once praised the Japanese podium master: “Ozawa is not only a musical genius, but also a unique human being. Making music with him means happiness.”
The Japanese particularly enjoyed sharing this happiness with children. Even in Vienna, Ozawa was able to infect the younger generation with his musical energy. “They listen very intently. But when it's boring, they shoot us with rubber bands,” he once told a Japanese daily. “That’s why we always said to ourselves: We have to do our best, otherwise we’ll get rubber bands.”
The success story of the star conductor
Born in 1935 in Hoten in what was then Japanese-occupied Manchuria, now northeast China, Ozawa came into contact with different cultures and influences at an early age. His father, a dentist, was a Buddhist and his mother was a Christian. It was she who introduced her son to Western music. When the family moved to Tokyo after the war, Ozawa received his first piano lessons. However, a sports accident in which he broke four fingers put an abrupt end to his dream of becoming a pianist.
Ozawa switched to composition and conducting and was celebrated as a great talent from his first public appearance at the age of 24 with the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra. The first prize at the 1959 International Conducting Competition in Besançon became a springboard into classical music. In Tanglewood, the famous summer music academy for young musicians in the US state of Massachusetts, the aspiring maestro immediately won the Kussevitsky competition. He worked as an assistant to Leonard Bernstein in New York, and in Berlin Herbert von Karajan took him under his wing.
In quick succession he became orchestra director in Chicago, Toronto and San Francisco. In 1970, with Gunther Schuller, he took over the management of the Tanglewood Festival, which he shaped for decades and which dedicated the “Ozawa Hall” to him in 1994. Ozawa is also credited with bringing the Boston Symphony Orchestra to worldwide fame under his successful 29-year leadership.
Despite being diagnosed with cancer in 2012, Ozawa continued to conduct until old age
In his native Japan, Ozawa founded the Saito Kinen Festival in 1992. It was later renamed the Seiji Ozawa Matsumoto Festival. Ozawa received an honorary doctorate from Harvard University and was committed to educating the next generation of musicians. In 2004, the maestro founded the Seiji Ozawa International Academy Switzerland in Geneva, where he taught young musicians free of charge. In 2011 he was awarded the Praemium Imperiale of the Japanese Imperial Family. The honor is considered one of the world's most important art awards.
Then that came Cancer-Diagnosis: In 2012 he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. Ozawa then gave up his position as music director of the Vienna State Opera and withdrew from concert operations, but returned to the conductor's podium in 2013. But his health problems have increasingly forced the maestro to cancel concerts and appearances at music festivals in recent years. (dpa)
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