Seiji Ozawa, the Japanese conductor who amazed audiences with the lithe physicality of his performances during three decades at the helm of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, has died, his management office said Feb. 9. He was 88.
The internationally acclaimed maestro, with his trademark mop of salt-and-pepper hair, led the BSO from 1973 to 2002, longer than any other conductor in the orchestra’s history. From 2002 to 2010, he was the music director of the Vienna State Opera.
He died of heart failure Feb. 6 at his home in Tokyo, according to his office, Veroza Japan.
He remained active in his later years, particularly in his native land. He was the artistic director and founder of the Seiji Ozawa Matsumoto Festival, a music and opera festival in Nagano Prefecture. He and the Saito Kinen Orchestra, which he co-founded in 1984, won the Grammy for best opera recording in 2016 for Ravel’s L’Enfant et Les Sortileges (The Child and the Spells).
In 2022, he conducted Seiji Ozawa Matsumoto Festival for the first time in three years to mark its 30th anniversary. That turned out to be his last public performance.
Ozawa was born Sept. 1, 1935, to Japanese parents in Manchuria, China, while it was under Japanese occupation.
After his family returned to Japan in 1944, he studied music under Hideo Saito, a cellist and conductor whom Ozawa revered. After forming the Saito Kinen Orchestra, Ozawa founded the Saito Kinen Festival in 1992, which was renamed in his name in 2015.(AP)
毎週届く！
