Seiji Ozawa ✝︎: “My roots are very German”

2024-02-09 16:38:28

Do Maestros get better as they get older? Not necessarily. And some people are getting old and haven’t been conducting for a long time. Like Seiji Ozawa, who died on February 6th at the age of 88 in his home in Tokyo. The cause of death: heart failure. But the cause of his career’s death 14 years ago was completely different: throat cancer.

He was diagnosed and operated on in 2010. Ozawa, always a tough character in the screen lion landscape, fought and defeated carcinoma. But he never regained his old strength. Although he was worshiped in a cult in Japan, where the elderly are particularly valued, his fragile body could no longer manage more than 25 minutes of Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings while sitting.

This man was once a smart whirlwind. The protection of Herbert von Karajan, who was introduced to him by Michiko Tanaka, the Japanese wife of Ufa star Victor de Kowa and an operetta singer herself, and his then all-powerful agent Ronald Wilford, known as “the Silver Fox”, from Columbia Artists did the rest.

also read

Another fact that was exotic at the time: In the 1970s and 1980s, Seiji Ozawa was – alongside the Indian Zubin Mehta – Asia’s hottest high culture export. Born on September 1, 1935 in Manchuria, he was the first world-class Japanese conductor. Ozawa’s appearance was strange with his turtleneck and fetish necklace, his steel-gray mane was wild.

In a WELT interview he later said: “The hairstyle was a Beatles imitation. Of course, I only wore the sweater because I wanted to cover up my supportive corset after a herniated disc. But then I found it comfortable for a while, and it became almost like a trademark. Like the necklace that was given to me by black musicians with whom we once organized a cross-over project that wasn’t yet known at the time. Many later thought it was a Buddhist fashion.”

Seji Ozawa’s apprenticeship, however, was typically Japanese. He spent that time as a piano student with Hideo Saito. Since he couldn’t pay for the lessons, he served – for seven years. He later founded the Saito Kinen Orchestra in honor of his role model.

Seiji Ozawa conducts Brahms’ Second

Here you will find content from YouTube

In order to display embedded content, your revocable consent to the transmission and processing of personal data is necessary, as the providers of the embedded content require this consent as third party providers [In diesem Zusammenhang können auch Nutzungsprofile (u.a. auf Basis von Cookie-IDs) gebildet und angereichert werden, auch außerhalb des EWR]. By setting the switch to “on”, you agree to this (revocable at any time). This also includes your consent to the transfer of certain personal data to third countries, including the USA, in accordance with Art. 49 (1) (a) GDPR. You can find more information about this. You can revoke your consent at any time using the switch and privacy at the bottom of the page.

He said about this time in an interview with WELT: “Saito was a pioneer. He had enjoyed his training in Germany, with the famous cellist Emanuel Feuermann and later, again in Japan, with the conductor Joseph Rosenstock. So my roots are very German, which helped me a lot later. The cello comes from the middle of the orchestra and the first Japanese formations were pure string ensembles. We played arrangements of Bach and Mozart there. And that’s why I build my sound ideal from the strings.”

After a rugby accident in which he broke two fingers, Ozawa switched to conducting. In 1959 he won the Besancon competition. He became Leonard Bernstein’s assistant, Karajan let his autocratic sun shine over him, Ronald Wilford took him under his wing.

Ozawa said: “Karajan was very curious about me and I was rattling with fear. Then came an offer to assist Lenny too. Of course I knew that the two of them weren’t exactly on good terms. Nevertheless, I dared to ask Karajan what I should do. And he just said, “Go, absolutely.” And then tell me how he tries it. But exactly.’”

Karajan talked and talked

And Ozawa continued: “Karajan could be very generous and then aloof. But he was just great to me, a young incompetent. Especially when he was in a talking mood, there was no escape. He took me with him in his Porsche, talked and talked. And his wife Eliette made us a small salad in Anif. At three in the morning he kicked me out. I was standing in front of the door without a car and I didn’t have any money for a taxi. Then I ran back to Salzburg.”

From then on, his career rose steeply in Asia, America and Europe, in concert halls, opera houses and at festivals. Ozawa, appreciated above all for what we consider to be an eclectic repertoire with Hector Berlioz as the radiantly sonorous centerpiece, was a regular guest in Berlin and seemed predestined to be Karajan’s crown prince alongside Jimmy Levine.

also read

He has since directed the Ravinia Festival and the Toronto and San Francisco symphony orchestras. At Deutsche Grammophon and elsewhere, he accumulated mountains of new records and CDs – there are said to have been 400 in the end. He became one of the busiest desk gods in the Olympic phase of classical music; his living room was the Concorde.

Seiji Ozawa conducted the premieres of Henze’s 8th Symphony and Messiaen’s epochal “Saint Francois”. At the time, Kent Nagano was his assistant. Of course, nothing happened with the Berlin Philharmonic in 1989; after Karajan’s death, they preferred the idiosyncratic Claudio Abbado, who was firmly rooted in Europe. Seiji Ozawa headed the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1976 to 2002.

At first it was a celebration of joy; he did an indescribable amount for their summer festival in Tanglewood, where the exquisite chamber music venue Ozawa Hall still fittingly remembers him today. But Ozawa’s era lasted too long. And it ultimately became a dry spell for the orchestra, which was gradually aging and playing more and more listlessly, as well as for the stagnating conductor.

Not a philosopher, a healer

The Vienna State Opera, a temporary honorary title for the independent Philharmonic, was Ozawa’s last permanent job. In addition to the symbolic direction of the Saito Kinen Orchestraa and the Seiji Ozawa Matsumoto Festival, which is now named after him and the venue.

In his prime, up until the 1990s, Seiji Ozawa was an inspiring, magically thrilling conductor, in both the 19th century and modern repertoire. Restrained yet gripping, precise yet sensual. And always with a touch of mystery that seemed to be hiding somewhere behind his eyes. Not a philosopher, but a healer.