Obituary, Seiji Ozawa (1935-2024)

The Japanese conductor Seiji Ozawa has died at the age of 88.

Born in 1935 in what is today Shenyang, Liaoning Province in northeastern China, Ozawa initially showed some interest in, and aptitude for, the piano - with a career as a concert pianist perhaps in his sights at first. An accident while playing rugby resulting in two broken fingers seems to have led to a change of tack - surely not an irrecoverable injury in its own right, but one that evidently prompted Ozawa to reconsider his plans. He went on to study composition and conducting at Tokyo's Toho Gakuen School of Music, graduating in 1957.

After a brief stint as a motor-scooter salesman while studying in Europe, Ozawa achieved his first major breakthrough at the 1959 Besançon International Competition of Orchestra Conductors. Among those who noticed the rising star’s talent was Charles Munch, at the time at the Boston Symphony Orchestra; following this, in something of a positive domino effect, Ozawa’s studies with Munch and Pierre Monteux led to him winning the Koussevitzky Prize at the Berkshire Music Center (now the Tanglewood Music Center), and this in turn enabled him to study with the even more internationally-renowned Karajan.

Seiji Ozawa and Herbert von Karajan discuss conducting Brahms, in a broadcast from 1981. English audio with Japanese subtitles.

A career unfolded that would see Ozawa conduct numerous acclaimed orchestras - the New York Philharmonic (under the auspices of Leonard Bernstein), the San Francisco Symphony, Japan’s NHK Symphony Orchestra and Japan Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic and more. Along the way Ozawa would blaze the trail for contemporary music by commissioning works from Ligeti and Takemitsu, make one of the first recordings of Messiaen's monumental Turangalîla-Symphonie, set a new record for the longest tenure of any conductor at the helm of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and in 1979 take the baton to lead the Beijing Symphony Orchestra in the first performance of Beethoven’s Choral Symphony after the relaxation of Cultural Revolution-era restrictions on Western musical performances.

In recognition of the influence that his teacher Hideo Saito had had on his formative years, Ozawa formed the Saito Kinen (‘Saito Memorial’) Orchestra in 1984 following Saito’s death - initially an ensemble of Saito’s former students who performed on a voluntary basis, it quickly became a respected feature of the orchestral scene, with tours of Europe and the United States, before taking its place as the centrepiece ensemble of the Saito Kinen Festival Matsumoto, held annually from 1992 to the present day in Matsumoto in central Honshu, Japan.

Illness began to impact Ozawa’s conducting career from the mid-2000s onward, though he displayed remarkable resilience and bounced back from several significant health setbacks; indeed, he was still at the podium as late as November 2022, conducting the Saito Kinen Orchestra in Beethoven’s Egmont Overture in a performance broadcast live to the International Space Station as a gesture of appreciation to the long-serving astronaut Dr Koichi Wakata, then in post as the Station’s first Japanese commander.

YouTube recording of the 'One Earth Mission' event - Japanese audio, English subtitles available.

Ozawa’s death was announced last week, with the cause described as heart failure. He is survived by his second wife, actress Miki Irie; his daughter Seira, a musician; and his son Yukiyoshi, an actor.

Seiji Ozawa - a selected discography