“Western music is like the sun,” Seiji Ozawa told Time magazine in 1987. “All over the world, the sunset is different, but the beauty is the same.”
So it was that the Japanese conductor Ozawa became one of east Asia’s most visible artistic exports, occupying two of the world’s most prestigious music directorships and guesting regularly with many leading orchestras. A protégé of Herbert von Karajan and Leonard Bernstein, he was noted for his elegant podium style and air of amiable eccentricity, and demonstrated a special empathy with colourful 19th and 20th-century repertoire, including Berlioz, Brahms, Mahler, Strauss, Debussy, Ravel, Messiaen and Takemitsu.
For 29 years he presided over the Boston Symphony Orchestra, a longevity that even his most illustrious predecessor, Serge Koussevitzky, did not