A complex, rewarding journey
By Richard Dyer, Globe Staff, 09/20/98
In 1960, a young music student from Tokyo's Toho School heard the Boston
Symphony Orchestra for the first time. Seiji Ozawa was 25 when he saw
Charles Munch conduct the BSO in Berlioz's "Symphonie fantastique" on
tour, and he can still recall details of that performance today. Postwar Japan
had never heard an orchestra of comparable quality; hearing the Boston
Symphony confirmed Ozawa's ambition to become a conductor.
Thirty-eight years later, Ozawa is celebrating his 25th-anniversary season as
music director of the BSO -- his tenure now matches that of his most
celebrated predecessor, Serge Koussevitzky, and now surpasses that of any
other leading music director in the world.
Ozawa was 38 when he was named music director; today he is 63, and the
last quarter-century has seen major changes in the man, the orchestra, the city,
and the society. He has survived personal crises, public controversy, and calls
for his resignation; he has taken the orchestra on historic tours to China,
Japan, South America, and Europe, and conducted more than 1,400
concerts, some of them unassailably great.
At points along the way Ozawa must have grown tired of constant
comparisons with Koussevitzky; once when a critic threw the name of
Koussevitzky in the face of Sir Georg Solti in Chicago, the conductor irritably
replied, "Get him back, then!" Ozawa doesn't lose his temper in public like
that, but he's always known he has to go his own way, and not someone
else's. Not every relationship with members of the orchestra and staff has
gone smoothly; Ozawa does not like to be crossed. But he does not shirk
from difficult decisions, and he has learned to live with their consequences. It
has been a long journey, complicated, difficult, rewarding, and, above all,
richly human.
Ozawa was born to Japanese parents in Manchuria in 1935. The family
returned to Japan when he was 5 years old. The first music Ozawa performed
in public was American spirituals and hymns from a little collection given to
him by GIs. With his brothers, he formed the Golden Gate Gospel Quartet --
recently Ozawa surprised filmmakers preparing a tribute for this week's
opening of his 25th-anniversary season by bursting into the refrain of "What a
Friend We Have in Jesus." From the age of 7 he had taken piano lessons; a
teenage soccer accident broke two fingers, leading him to concentrate on
composition and conducting instead of hoping for a keyboard career.
After graduating from the Toho School in 1959, Ozawa followed the advice
of his teacher, Hideo Saito, and went to Europe; it took him 63 days on a
freighter from Kobe, Japan, to Messina, Italy. Ozawa passed the time by
forming and rehearsing a male chorus from the ship's crew. Subsidized by the
Subaru motorbike company, Ozawa was on his way to a conducting
competition in Besancon, France -- which he won, attracting the attention of
two members of the jury: Eugene Bigot, who became his teacher, and Munch,
who became his mentor, suggesting that he come to study at the Tanglewood
Music Center.
Ozawa came to Tanglewood in the summer of 1960, traveling by Greyhound
from Logan Airport. He tasted his first pizza and lived in the world of the
Boston Symphony Orchestra; Munch coached him in Debussy's "La Mer,"
and urged him to be more supple. Events moved quickly after that. Ozawa
won the Karajan Competition in Germany and became assistant to the
maestro; in Berlin, he met Leonard Bernstein, who agreed to see him because
of a letter of recommendation from the widow of former BSO music director
Serge Koussevitzky. Bernstein invited Ozawa to become his assistant in New
York, and Karajan -- Bernstein's great rival -- urged Ozawa to take
advantage of the opportunity. Ozawa is the only protege of both of the two
most famous conductors of mid-century.
Ozawa made his debut with the New York Philharmonic in 1961; three years
later, he returned to Tanglewood to conduct the Boston Symphony Orchestra
for the first time, replacing the legendary Pierre Monteux, who had died earlier
in the summer. The next year he became music director of the Toronto
Symphony Orchestra, and in 1970 he took over the San Francisco Symphony
-- the same year that he became co-artistic director at Tanglewood.
From the beginning, Ozawa's extraordinary talents were obvious. Even his
sharpest critics admit that his musical memory is unique, and the musicians
among them openly envy it. No less remarkable is his physical gift for
conducting, his technical ability to make complex rhythms clear and to
communicate musical detail and emotional nuance in unambiguous, graceful,
and expressive gesture.
In his first years with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, there were doubts
about Ozawa's musical maturity -- he was, after all, still in his 30s. He didn't
give much thought to image, but his long hair, tunics, and love beads created a
trendy one for him that didn't exactly fit; he had a reputation for flashiness, but
he was always profoundly serious. His acquiescence to record company
agendas that promoted him primarily in showpieces was also probably a
mistake; later Ozawa regretted those first recordings of Ravel and Respighi
because they delayed public acceptance of his work in more substantial
repertory. As always when surfaces are so dazzling, Ozawa was criticized for
offering surface without substance. In Japan, Ozawa was sometimes treated
as a prophet without honor; in America and Europe, he, like other musicians
from the Pacific Rim, encountered prejudice from those who did not believe
an Asian could understand or master the subtleties of Western music. That he
should be asked in later years to conduct the Vienna Philharmonic in Mahler,
to record Wagner with the Berlin Philharmonic, came as a vindication.
Also, in the BSO Ozawa had inherited a great institution from his
predecessors Munch, Erich Leinsdorf, and William Steinberg, and an
immensely authoritative concertmaster, Joseph Silverstein. Ozawa felt a great
deference to the senior musicians and to the orchestra; it was only later, when
he was older and the orchestra was filled with players he had chosen himself,
that he felt he could exert his full authority -- today all but 22 members of the
orchestra, a full 80 percent, are his appointees.
By the end of the '70s, the honeymoon for Ozawa and the orchestra had
ended. Ozawa had survived, barely, some trials by fire (the Salzburg Festival
is not the place to try conducting a Mozart opera for the first time) and was
under managerial pressure to keep building his career, although he already
stood at the top of his profession. He was also driven by his own curiosity and
ambition; his work had primarily been in the concert hall, and he wanted to
know the operatic world. Bernard Haitink was praised for comparable
curiosity, but Ozawa ran into a lot of flak -- he was attacked for being a
dilettante in opera and for neglecting detail in his symphonic work.
Also, Ozawa had grown concerned that his children, Seira and Yukiyoshi,
were turning into Americans, unable to communicate with their own
grandmother in her own language, so he made the decision to send his family
back to Tokyo -- a decision made at considerable psychological cost,
because Ozawa is a deeply committed family man, and at physical cost too,
because of all the extra travel it required. Because Ozawa was
overcommitted, his relationship with the BSO suffered; some programming
became questionable, and the musical level of his performances became
erratic.
By the mid-'80s, however, things began slowly to change. The children grew
up, went to school, became independent. Ozawa suffered a ski accident that
was career-threatening; he could barely lift his arms above his shoulders.
Meanwhile, beloved friends and members of his family had died; so did his
mentors Karajan and Bernstein.
As his 60th birthday loomed and passed, a new concentration and emotional
depth appeared in his conducting -- although some of his perpetual critics
failed to hear it. Ozawa also began to be increasingly concerned with what his
own legacy might be, and with how he could possibly repay the debts he
owed to his predecessors.
He began in Japan in 1984, by creating the Saito Kinen Orchestra in memory
of his first teacher, and in 1992 by establishing the Saito Kinen Festival, which
is modeled, in part, on Tanglewood. This was widely applauded; more
controversial were the steps he took to repay the debt to his BSO
predecessors by taking decisive action two years ago to redirect the
Tanglewood Music Center -- his purpose, widely misunderstood, was not to
damage the celebrated chamber music activity or devalue those running it, but
to restore other dimensions of the traditional program that had faltered or
disappeared. He began mentoring a whole sequence of talented assistant
conductors, the way Bernstein and Karajan had mentored him, and he formed
a special bond with the most gifted of them, Robert Spano.
Controversies about Ozawa have tended to fall into several categories; it is
not an accident that his most important achievements fall into those same
categories.
First and most basic is his artistic profile. Listeners with other tastes and
priorities have always found him deficient, and probably always will. Ozawa is
still good at what he has always been good at -- the big repertory, anything
flamboyant, colorful, or theatrical; the major works of the early 20th century;
and new music. He is superb in music with a strong rhythmic profile (ballet
scores by Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Ravel, Stravinsky, and Bartok), and he
can be surpassingly supple and sensitive in music requiring charm or coloristic
allure. Works of strong religious or antiwar sentiment attract him strongly. He
has a strong rhythmic sense, a feeling for melody, an outstanding ear, an
understanding of structure, and bravado.
No one is going to give a composer a better first performance than Ozawa.
He has often been criticized for insufficient commitment to new music,
although he's led more of it than any other celebrity-level conductor of his
generation. He has conducted 35 commissioned works during his tenure at the
BSO -- 12 were commissioned for the orchestra's centennial in 1981, and
more are expected for the forthcoming centennial of Symphony Hall -- as well
as many contemporary works not commissioned by the orchestra. In his
youth, he sought out senior masters like Messiaen and Lutoslawski, and he
still does that; Henri Dutilleux and Michael Tippett recently delivered
career-crowning masterpieces to the BSO. Throughout his career, Ozawa
consistently promoted the music of his friend Toru Takemitsu, who was only
five years older. One could wish for a more substantial commitment to new
American music, but over the years Ozawa has conducted new or recent
works by Antoniou, Cage, Carter, Chihara, Crumb, DelTredici, Druckman,
Foss, Harbison, Kirchner, Kolb, Lieberson, Martino, Perle, Rands,
Rochberg, Schuller, Sessions, Starer, Thomas, Walker, Wilson, and Zwilich.
Real advocacy may be missing -- would it have been better to concentrate on
four or five of these composers, and regularly introduce all of their new
works? -- but this list does cover a lot of territory.
In his defense, one can say that no conductor is equally good in everything --
Koussevitzky wasn't a born Mozartean either, and the composers Ozawa has
difficulties with are the very ones most other conductors have trouble with too.
Also a conductor today has to know a lot more music than any of the
legendary maestros of early in this century: music of the Baroque period, and
100 years' worth of new pieces.
There are things Ozawa was never particularly good at that are still not among
his strongest points -- the repertory of the classical period in general, and
Mozart in particular, although he can be challenged by a soloist like Peter
Serkin or Maria Tipo into first-class Mozart. One of Ozawa's most
remarkable qualities is his capacity for continuing growth; some things he was
not good at before have slowly but steadily become better. No one hearing
his Mozart "Cosi fan tutte" at Tanglewood in 1970 could possibly have
predicted his superb "Falstaff" in 1992 -- Seiji Ozawa made himself into an
opera conductor. His early Mahler performances were stylistically unsure, but
now he knows exactly what he wants. He is still fired by the ambition to keep
learning music he hasn't learned before. A while back he conducted "The
Barber of Seville" in Japan just for the fun of it; once he casually mentioned
that he was learning Alban Berg's "Lulu" simply because he wanted to --
there was no prospect of a performance. At Tanglewood, he conducted
unforgettable performances of Britten's "Peter Grimes," which he is unlikely
to be invited to conduct elsewhere.
To his credit, Ozawa is remarkably free of personal jealousy. In the early
years, there was some conflict over repertory and recording with principal
guest conductor Colin Davis, but today Ozawa enjoys cordial relationships
with most of his podium colleagues, and the BSO boasts the most prestigious
roster of guest conductors of any American orchestra. Ozawa no longer feels
compelled to do things that do not represent him at his best; he does feel
compelled to have those things done by people who excel at them. Persuading
Bernard Haitink to accept the position of principal guest conductor was a
major coup.
Ozawa is a loyal man, and the BSO has built a remarkable relationship with a
number of soloists and guest artists, some of whom, like Peter Serkin, Jessye
Norman, and Frederica von Stade, have enjoyed career-long associations
with Ozawa -- Yo-Yo Ma first played with Ozawa when he was 13. With
James Levine, Ozawa is probably the best accompanist in the business today,
as Eugene Ormandy was in the generation before. Ozawa will follow a soloist
he respects anywhere he or she wants to go -- he has given great
performances of Beethoven's "Emperor" Concerto with pianists as diverse as
Rudolf Serkin, Russell Sherman, and Dubravka Tomsic. Ozawa considered
his collaboration with Serkin on the Beethoven Concerto cycle one of the
greatest learning experiences for himself and the orchestra ("We grew up
together," he said at the time). The only problem is that the company of
regulars has now grown so large it's very hard for a newcomer to break in,
although, after her 1992 debut, violinist Pamela Frank became one of the
family almost immediately.
Some Ozawa-era controversies were intense -- the most famous of them was
the 1982 cancellation of the performances of Stravinsky's "Oedipus Rex,"
scheduled to be narrated by Vanessa Redgrave, on the grounds of
public-safety issues that arose because of the actress's pro-Palestinian views.
Redgrave sued and lost, but the BSO did not occupy high moral ground
during the controversy.
Others controversies continue. Badly scarred by a personnel battle at the San
Francisco Symphony early in his career that turned into a racial-sexual
controversy, Ozawa is sometimes slow to make decisions; he has been
particularly cautious after making a couple of wrong choices for exposed
positions in the BSO. It took nearly a decade to find a successor to
former BSO principal flute Doriot Anthony Dwyer, although to be fair, two
successors were chosen who turned the job down, including the superb player
who finally changed his mind and took it, Jacques Zoon. On the other hand,
Ozawa has sometimes said "Bingo" on the spot, and he's been right -- he has
made some superior appointments to the orchestra, and some of his choices,
like principal bass Edwin Barker, bid fair to become as legendary as some of
the great players Ozawa inherited (timpanist Everett Firth is now the last of
them). The moment when every section of every orchestra is at peak form
comes only rarely -- it's an organic function of youth and age, experience and
eagerness, contractual protections, individual talent, and commitment to an
ensemble ideal. Nevertheless, it's safe to say that player for player, the current
BSO is competitive with any of its previous incarnations, and that under
Ozawa the orchestra has developed capacities for the heavier German
repertory that it formerly lacked, and without losing the coloristic finesse that
has been its principal glory since before Ozawa's birth.
Orchestral morale is difficult to assess, even when internal controversies
become public, as they did a couple of years ago when the concertmaster and
principal cellist published a letter virtually calling for Ozawa's resignation. It is
built into their situation that orchestra players will have ambivalent feelings
about their music director and boss; Ozawa has remained fluid, while some
attitudes toward him have become fixed. What matters is that the BSO will
deliver Ozawa whatever he asks for -- and it is capable of delivering what any
guest conductor wants too.
Ozawa has never let himself be drawn into arguments with the press and
music critics; he always speaks levelly, honestly, and forthrightly to members
of the press, no matter what they have recently been saying about him. He
once amiably slipped into a Japanese hot tub alongside this writer, something
one cannot imagine Bernstein or Karajan doing. He hasn't gone out of his way
to court the public, although he appears in public all the time, and not just in
Symphony Hall -- he's often been sighted in Fenway Park and Foxboro
Stadium. Everett Firth has pointed out that Ozawa conducts the national
anthem as seriously as he conducts the Mahler Ninth. He has fluctuated in
temporary favor, but over the years he also has won lasting affection and
esteem, which is harder to achieve than a standing ovation after a
performance. That earned public esteem has made it possible for Ozawa to
work effectively with his board and management to secure the BSO's future in
an unpromising environment of governmental indifference, corporate greed,
and an aging and dwindling public for any form of serious endeavor. The
Ozawa era has seen several significant increases in the BSO's endowment, the
acquisition of important real estate both in Boston and at Tanglewood, the
ongoing restoration of Symphony Hall, and the construction of Ozawa Hall at
Tanglewood. John Williams and Keith Lockhart have reason to appreciate
that Ozawa has taken a more direct and supportive interest in the Boston
Pops than any of his predecessors as music director; Ozawa knows that it is
in his own interest for the Pops to operate on a high artistic level. None of this
would have been possible without the public support earned by his
day-to-day achievement.
It was a long journey from his first Mahler Third in 1977 to the ones last
season, an even longer journey from that debut performance of the Bizet
Symphony at Tanglewood to the Beethoven Ninth that opens the season this
week. Ozawa's journey has been of little steps forward, some sliding back,
some great leaps forward; at every stage of the way it has been a rewarding,
fully human journey, with music as the lodestone for the compass. Because of
that, listening to Ozawa and measuring him has been a way of measuring
ourselves.
A critic's choice of performances
Everyone will have his own list of favorite Ozawa performances -- just as
some have lists of least favorites (my own would be headed by Bach's "St.
John" Passion in 1981, and two works of Mozart, "Idomeneo" and the
Requiem).
But the list of unforgettable events would be longer. My own would include
some of the operas -- "Eugene Onegin," "Falstaff," "Wozzeck," and
"L'Enfant et les sortileges" to start with. It would include some of the
premieres (Henze's Eighth Symphony, Tippett's "The Rose Lake," R. Murray
Schaefer's "Ko-Wo-Kiku," Harbison's First Symphony, and, as
music-theater, Cage's "Renga with Apartment House: 1776").
It would include some of the most notable collaborations with Jessye Norman
(Mahler's "Rueckert" Lieder and Act 2 of "Tristan und Isolde" with Jon
Vickers), Jose van Dam (the "Rueckert" Lieder again), Frederica von Stade
("Beatrice et Benedict" and "The Damnation of Faust"), Maria Tipo
(Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto and Mozart's K.467), Rudolf Serkin
(the Beethoven Concertos), Peter Serkin (many things, but especially several
Mozart Concerti, Stravinsky, and the Lieberson Concerto), Mstislav
Rostropovich (the Lutoslawski Concerto and the Prokofiev
Symphony-Concerto), Krystian Zimerman (the Liszt Concerti).
It would certainly include the Tanglewood performance of Schoenberg's
"Gurrelieder" and the Symphony Hall performance of Britten's "War
Requiem," a piece that awakened some of Ozawa's most powerful musical
and emotional responses. In the mainstream orchestral repertory, it would
include individual performances of a wide range of works by Bartok,
Stravinsky, Berlioz, Ravel, and Tchaikovsky, and some of the symphonies of
Mahler, particularly the Second, the Third, and the Ninth.
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