February 6

Star conductor Seiji Ozawa passes away at the age of 88

(Bild: APA/HANS KLAUS TECHT)

The 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. According to the broadcaster NHK and other Japanese media on Friday, Ozawa died of heart failure at his home in Tokyo on February 6.

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 is mourning the loss of its honorary member, who, according to the Asahi Shimbun, has already been buried in a close family circle.

Worked as a servant for 7 years
Seiji Ozawa was born in 1935 as the son of Japanese immigrants in Shenyang, Manchuria (China). After his family returned to Tokyo, he initially wanted to become a pianist. It was only after the enthusiastic rugby player broke two index fingers that he decided to pursue a career as a conductor. In order 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.

Esophageal cancer
Health problems had forced the maestro to cut back considerably in recent years. After he was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer in 2010, he gave up his post as music director of the Vienna State Opera and largely withdrew from the concert business.

"Longest-serving" chief conductor
In his home country, where he was music director of the Mito Chamber Orchestra, among others, he still occasionally stood on the podium. In Japan, he founded the "Saito Kinen Festival" in 1992, which was renamed the "Seiji Ozawa Matsumoto Festival" in 2015. He was also influential for 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 has conducted orchestras in Chicago, Toronto, San Francisco and elsewhere, and for three decades he shaped the Boston Symphony Orchestra - as the "longest-serving" chief conductor of a North American orchestra.