Ozawa was music director of the Vienna State Opera from 2002 to 2010 and worked in all major opera houses in the world. He is considered one of the first Asians to gain widespread recognition in the classical music field in the West.
The Japanese star conductor Seiji Ozawa has died at the age of 88. According to broadcaster NHK and other Japanese media on Friday, Ozawa died of heart failure at his home in Tokyo on February 6. The former assistant of Herbert von Karajan and Leonard Bernstein was music director of the Vienna State Opera from 2002 to 2010. The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra mourns the loss of their honorary member, who, according to “Asahi Shimbun”, has already been buried in close family circles.
Seiji Ozawa was born September 1, 1935 to Japanese immigrants in Shenyang, Manchuria (China). After his family returned to Tokyo, he initially wanted to become a pianist. Only after the enthusiastic rugby player broke two index fingers did he decide to pursue a career as a conductor. In order to be able to finance his studies at the private Toho music school with Hideo Saito, he spent seven years as a servant in Saito’s house. Bernstein made him his assistant at the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in 1961/62.
Second home in Boston, closely connected to Austria
Health problems had forced the maestro to slow down significantly in recent years. After he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in 2010, he gave up his position as music director of the Vienna State Opera and largely withdrew from concerts. In his homeland, where he led, among other things, the Mito Chamber Orchestra as music director, he was still occasionally at the podium. In Japan, among other things, he founded the “Saito Kinen Festival” in 1992, which was renamed the “Seiji Ozawa Matsumoto Festival” in 2015. He also had a formative influence on Tanglewood, the famous summer music academy for young musicians in Massachusetts, which he shaped for decades and which dedicated the “Ozawa Hall” to him in 1994. He was orchestra director in Chicago, Toronto and San Francisco, among others, and for three decades he shaped the Boston Symphony Orchestra – as the “longest-serving” chief conductor of a North American orchestra.
He was closely connected to Austria. The Vienna Philharmonic’s collaboration with Seiji Ozawa began in 1966 at the Salzburg Festival. “Over five decades we performed an incredibly broad repertoire: it ranged from the Baroque to the masters of Viennese Classicism and Romanticism to the modern era, with concerts and premieres by contemporary composers. A special highlight we experienced was the New Year’s Concert 2002 in the Golden Hall of the Vienna Music Association. As a sign of our close artistic and personal ties, we awarded him honorary membership of the orchestra in 2010,” said the Vienna Philharmonic on Friday. “We were able to play with him for the last time in autumn 2021 as part of our Japan tour. Seiji Ozawa conducted the slow movement from Mozart’s Divertimento KV 136.”
Honorary member of the Vienna State Opera
Ozawa made his operatic debut at the Salzburg Festival in 1969 with Mozart’s “Cosi fan tutte”. In 2002, Ozawa became music director of the Vienna State Opera under the direction of Ioan Holender, where he made his debut in 1988 with the Russian new production of “Eugene Onegin”, thereby demonstrating his broad connoisseurship from Mozart to Krenek. In 2007, Seiji Ozawa was made an honorary member of the Vienna State Opera. In 2022, as part of the Austrian Music Theater Prize in Grafenegg, he received a special award for his outstanding contributions to musical theater, which his daughter Seira Ozawa accepted on behalf of him.
Born on September 1, 1935 in Manchuria to Japanese parents, Ozawa is considered one of the first Asians to achieve widespread recognition in the classical music field in the West. Ozawa first studied piano, then conducting and composition at the Toho Gakuen School of Music in Tokyo. He then continued his education in Europe. In 1959 he won the Besancon conducting competition and in 1960 the Sergei Koussevitzky Prize. Over the course of his career he has worked with all famous orchestras and made guest appearances at all important opera houses. In 2002 he conducted the Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s Concert. (APA)
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