Departure onto the International Stage

Seiji Ozawa’s international career began with his first-prize victory at the Besançon International Competition for Young Conductors in France in September 1959. At the age of 23, he arrived in Marseille in March 1959 aboard a cargo ship departing from Kobe, and reached Paris the following April. Ozawa had no concrete plans regarding where or with whom he would study. It was Kyoko Edo, a pianist who had already been studying in Paris, who informed him of the Besançon conducting competition and encouraged him to apply.

The result was a first-place win. At a party held after the competition, Ozawa asked to become a pupil of the renowned French conductor Charles Munch, who had served on the jury and was then the music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Munch advised Ozawa to go to the Tanglewood Music Festival, then known as the Berkshire Music Festival.

On November 21, 1970, Ozawa’s father, Kaisaku Ozawa, passed away suddenly at the age of 71. Deeply shocked by his father’s unexpected death, Ozawa nevertheless conducted Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique at his official debut as music director of the San Francisco Symphony on December 2 of the same year. At 35, his youthful, stylish presence on the podium and fresh musical interpretations captivated audiences. The arrival of this charismatic new “hero” of classical music generated enthusiastic attention—even citizens who had little interest in classical music found themselves talking about him. Ozawa’s approachable personality and casual attire brought a relaxed, fresh atmosphere to the orchestra, and the musicians affectionately began calling him “Seiji” by his first name. In December 1971, his long-awaited first child, Seira, was born in San Francisco. The birth of his daughter roughly a year after his father’s death brought a profound shift in Ozawa’s perspective on life.

Thirty Years with the Boston Symphony Orchestra

In the summer of 1964, Ozawa conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) for the first time at the Tanglewood Music Festival, leading Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition (arranged by Ravel). From the summer of 1970, he assumed the post of the festival’s music director —a role traditionally held concurrently by the BSO music director—after the elderly William Steinberg, then BSO conductor, declined the position.

In February 1972, it was announced that Ozawa would become the next music director of the BSO. Initially, he had declined the offer, not wanting to leave San Francisco, which he greatly cherished. However, when the BSO agreed to allow him to hold both positions, Ozawa decided to live with his family in San Francisco and commute alone to Boston. Ultimately, he continued with the SFS for five more seasons until 1976, conducting monumental works such as Berlioz’s La damnation de Faust, the dramatic symphony Roméo et Juliette, the opera Béatrice et Bénédict, Mahler’s Symphonies Nos. 3, 6, and 8 (Symphony of a Thousand), Schoenberg’s Gurre-Lieder, and Stravinsky’s opera Oedipus Rex.

Prior to assuming the role of music director of the BSO in September 1973, Ozawa had served as the orchestra’s music advisor beginning in September 1972. In February 1973, he recorded Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique with the BSO.

At his official BSO music director debut on September 28, 1973, he conducted La damnation de Faust. At that time, Ozawa was just 38 years old. He conducted most works from memory, demonstrating ever-greater command with the large-scale compositions. Ozawa later reflected that it was a courageous act for a traditional orchestra in a conservative East Coast city to appoint him as music director.

In December 1976, Ozawa— who had been born in Shenyang, northeastern China, to Japanese parents and spent part of his childhood in Beijing— visited the city of his youth with his family for the first time in 35 years. In June 1978, he conducted the Beijing Central Orchestra. At that time in China, the Gang of Four had been ousted, and Western music had just been permitted again. In March 1978, Ozawa realized a long-held dream by taking the BSO on a tour of Japan. The following year, in March 1979, he led the BSO on a tour of China as a cultural envoy to commemorate the normalization of diplomatic relations between the United States and China. 

For the BSO’s centennial tour in 1981, Ozawa led the orchestra through Japan as well as major European cities, including Paris, Berlin, Vienna, and London. Earning the trust and respect of the BSO—a group of top-tier professionals—was no easy task. Yet Ozawa overcame these challenges, refining the elite ensemble and elevating the orchestra to new levels of sophistication during his tenure. In American orchestras, the music director holds personnel authority, and by the time Ozawa concluded his 20-year directorship, more than half of the BSO’s members had been musicians he personally approved. Over nearly 30 years with the BSO, he explored a vast repertoire, with particularly notable recordings including Ravel’s orchestral works, various works by Berlioz, and the complete symphonies of Mahler.

On April 20, 2002, Ozawa conducted his final regular subscription concert as BSO music director, featuring Mahler’s Symphony No. 9. On July 14, he bid farewell to the orchestra at Tanglewood with Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique and Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy. Ozawa had likened an orchestra to a city park, with the conductor serving as its caretaker—and he fulfilled that role brilliantly for nearly three decades.

Ultimately, November 29, 2008, when he performed Symphonie fantastique, marked Ozawa’s final collaboration with the BSO.

Return Flow to Japan and Europe

In his homeland of Japan, a Saito Hideo Memorial Concert was held in September 1984 to mark the 10th anniversary of the death of his mentor, Hideo Saito. Ozawa conducted the Toho Gakuen Memorial Orchestra, an ensemble formed primarily of Saito’s former students. This orchestra became the foundation for the Saito Kinen Orchestra (SKO), established around Ozawa, which began touring Europe in 1987 and, in 1991, opened the season at Carnegie Hall. The SKO’s impeccably unified ensemble astonished audiences in Europe and North America. Ozawa regarded the early SKO as an “experiment” to test how fully Japanese musicians could perform Western classical music. With the SKO, Ozawa embraced the principle that, although he was the conductor, he was also one member of the orchestra. In keeping with this belief, he made it his custom to appear on stage together with the musicians rather than entering alone.

From 1992 onward, Ozawa served as general director of the Saito Kinen Festival Matsumoto, now the Seiji Ozawa Matsumoto Festival. He often likened symphonic music and opera to the two wheels of a car, emphasizing his determination to place particular focus on opera. In opera, the festival centered primarily on 20th-century works, including Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex and The Rake’s Progress, Honegger’s Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher, Poulenc’s Les mamelles de Tirésias and Dialogues des Carmélites, Janáček’s Jenůfa and The Cunning Little Vixen, Britten’s Peter Grimes, Berg’s Wozzeck, Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle, and Ravel’s L’Enfant et les sortilèges. In addition, between 1993 and 2002, Ozawa performed all of Beethoven’s symphonies with the SKO and completed a complete recorded cycle of the symphonies.

Ozawa made his debut at the Vienna State Opera in 1988 with Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin. In January 1990, he debuted in a subscription concert of the Vienna Philharmonic, conducting Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra. From then on, he appeared almost every year in the Vienna Philharmonic’s regular concert series, and in 1993 he led the orchestra on its tour of Japan. At the Vienna State Opera during the 1990s, Ozawa conducted Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades as well as Verdi’s Falstaff and Ernani. In June 1999, it was announced that Ozawa would assume the position of music director of the Vienna State Opera in September 2002.

On New Year’s Day 2002, he conducted the Vienna Philharmonic New Year’s Concert. In December of the same year, he led a new production of Ernst Krenek’s Jonny spielt auf at the Vienna State Opera. In October 2004, he conducted the Vienna State Opera on its tour of Japan. Although his contract as music director was extended through 2010, Ozawa was forced to cancel all of his scheduled performances at the Vienna State Opera in 2010 due to treatment for esophageal cancer, and he was unable to conclude his tenure with a final triumphant appearance.

Legacy and Continuity

In the United States, from his late twenties onward, Ozawa sustained an unbroken streak of success, leading top-tier orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and the Philadelphia Orchestra. By his thirties, he had been entrusted with major orchestras on both the West and East Coasts. Settling in Boston, he spent nearly 30 years transforming the BSO into an ever more refined and sophisticated ensemble. A passionate fan of the Boston Red Sox, Ozawa continued to wear the team’s signature color—red—until the end of his life.

On November 6, 2025, the City of Boston and the BSO jointly honored Ozawa, who had passed away in February 2024, by naming the intersection of St. Stephen Street and Massachusetts Avenue in front of Symphony Hall Seiji Ozawa Square. A dedication ceremony was held to unveil the new street sign, at which Ozawa’s daughter, Seira Ozawa, also delivered remarks.

That same evening at Boston’s Symphony Hall, Nodoka Okisawa, who succeeded Ozawa as principal guest conductor of the Seiji Ozawa Matsumoto Festival, made her subscription debut with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Like Ozawa, Okisawa is a winner of the Besançon International Conducting Competition. Though still in her late thirties, she also serves as principal conductor of the Kyoto Symphony Orchestra, based in Kyoto—Boston’s sister city. The program featured Requiem for Strings, one of Toru Takemitsu’s most representative works and a piece by one of Ozawa’s closest musical allies, along with Dvořák’s Violin Concerto (soloist: Midori Goto) and Symphony No. 7. The Boston audience responded with an enthusiastic standing ovation.