Ozawa Seiji, *1 September 1935 Fengtian (now Shenyang, Manchuria), †6 February 2024 Tokyo, Japanese conductor. Until 1958, he studied piano at the Tōhō music school in Tokyo, and after a hand injury, composition and conducting with H. Sait. In 1960, he studied conducting at the Berkshire Music Center in Tanglewood under C. Münch and P. Monteux, winning the Koussevitzky Award; he was also a scholarship holder with H. von Karajan in Berlin. He made his debut in 1954 and conducted, among others, the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra; in 1959, he won the first prize at the international conducting competition in Besançon. In 1961–62 and 1964–65, he served as L. Bernstein’s assistant in the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. During this time, he conducted many orchestras in the United States, including the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1962. From 1965 to 1969, he was an artistic director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and from 1970 to 1976 of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. From 1973, he became permanently associated with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, collaborating with many ensembles in Europe and Japan (in 1972–91, he led the New Japan Philharmonic Orchestra as a guest conductor, and was later appointed honorary director of this ensemble). In 1964–68, he was also music director of the Festival de Ravinia; in 1973 advisor to the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, and in 1973 artistic director of the Berkshire Music Center. Opera was an important part of Ozawa’s interests; in 1969 he debuted in Salzburg in Mozart’s Così fan tutte. Since then, he has conducted numerous performances, including: at Covent Garden, La Scala in Milan, the Opera in Paris, the Wiener Staatsoper, and at the Metropolitan Opera House (since 1992).
Ozawa’s conducting art was characterised by precision and attention to detail, and he usually conducts from memory. He was especially appreciated as an interpreter of monumental works from the second half of the 19th and 20th centuries. He conducted the world premieres of works by, among others, T. Takemitsu, G. Ligeti (San Francisco Polyphony, 1975), P. Maxwell Davies (Symphony No. 2, 1981), O. Messiaen (opera Saint François d’Assise, staged in Paris 1983), H.W. Henze (Symphony No. 8, 1993). Among Ozawa’s recordings, the complete of Mahler symphonies (Philips, 1980–93) gained particular recognition.
