World-famous star conductor Seji Ozawa died on February 6 at the age of 88, Japanese media reported on Friday. The conductor was music director of the Vienna State Opera from 2002 to 2020.
Japanese star conductor Seiji Ozawa has died at the age of 88. Ozawa died of heart failure at his home in Tokyo on February 6, according to broadcaster NHK and other Japanese media.
The former assistant to Herbert von Karajan and Leonard Bernstein was music director of the Vienna State Opera from 2002 to 2010. The Vienna Philharmonic mourns the loss of their honorary member, who, according to “Asahi Shimbun”, has already been buried in close family circles.
Worked as a clerk for 7 years
Seiji Ozawa was born in 1935 in Shenyang, Manchuria (China) to Japanese immigrants. After his family returned to Tokyo, he initially wanted to become a pianist. It was only after the avid rugby player broke two index fingers that he decided to pursue a career as a conductor. 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 assistant to the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in 1961/62.
esophageal cancer
Health problems had forced the maestro to take it easy in recent years. After being diagnosed with esophageal cancer in 2010, he gave up his position as music director of the Vienna State Opera and largely withdrew from concerts.
“Longest serving” chief conductor
In his home country, where he led the Mito Chamber Orchestra as music director, he still occasionally appeared on stage. In Japan he founded the ‘Saito Kinen Festival’ in 1992, which was renamed ‘Seiji Ozawa Matsumoto Festival’ in 2015. He also had a formative influence on Tanglewood, the famed summer music academy for young musicians in Massachusetts, which he shaped for decades and which dedicated “Ozawa Hall” to him in 1994. He was orchestra director in Chicago, Toronto and San Francisco, among others, and formed the Boston Symphony Orchestra for thirty years – as the ‘longest serving’ chief conductor of a North American orchestra.
Source: Krone
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