By Herbert Kupferberg

When Seiji Ozawa was named music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1972, it seemed the most unlikely of musical marriages. The Boston Symphony, the third-oldest orchestra in the country, was solidly established, conservative, and traditional, while Seiji Ozawa was new on the scene, adventurous, and exotic. Not only a generation gap but a philosophical chasm seemed to separate the then 91-year-old orchestra and the 37-year-old conductor. After all, the BSO’s most celebrated maestro, the revered Serge Koussevitzky, had been a courtly old-world musician who once apologized to a Tanglewood audience for doffing his jacket on a sweltering day; the newcomer was a bouncy motorbike enthusiast who liked to conduct in an open-collar tunic and turtleneck sweater, with free-swinging bead necklaces.

Yet today, Seiji Ozawa, only slightly less ebullient at 62, is celebrating 25 years with the BSO and has been named Musical America’s 1998 Musician of the Year—a tribute not only to his quarter of a century on the Boston podium (the longest tenure of any musical director currently active with an American orchestra) but also to his general import and significance on the international music scene.

In Boston Ozawa has become almost as much of a fixture as Koussevitzky once was. Indeed, his tenure has now equaled Koussevitzky’s and is certain to exceed it. In an era when conductors jet merrily from city to city and even “permanent” music directors don’t stay put very long, Ozawa has essentially cast his lot with one city and one orchestra. And he has done so in such a productive fashion that the entire music world seems to be on first-name terms with “Seiji,” much in the same manner that it used to refer familiarly (though not to his face) to his predecessor as “Koussy.” In fact, many Bostonians regard “Seiji” almost as a home-grown product, despite his Japanese origins, for after all, it was at Tanglewood in the Berkshires that he mastered his trade, established his credentials, and set himself on the road to becoming one of the century’s premier conductors.

Although he is a reticent individual—“a private person,” by his own description—and by no means either assertive or complacent, Ozawa is not afraid to acknowledge that the Boston Symphony Orchestra today is far different from the ensemble he first heard at Tanglewood as a student, or that he himself is largely responsible for its transformation into the distinctive instrument of today.

“When I first came to America in 1960,” he recalled in a radio interview recently, “Charles Munch was musical director of the Boston Symphony, and the Orchestra’s sound was colorful, flexible, and spontaneous, free-sounding in a way that was very right for French repertory. When I became musical director much later, I wanted to add to this beautiful color and sensitive playing the kind of darker sound necessary for Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler, and Bruckner. This took some time, but I’m very proud that the Boston Symphony now has all of this. It didn’t lose the sensitive, colorful playing that has always been a tradition here. At the same time, the sound is now wonderful for Brahms, Bruckner, Mendelssohn, and Schumann. It’s a sound that’s a little heavier, and very satisfying. That is why so many guest conductors love to do that repertory with the Boston Symphony.

Of course, Ozawa’s effect upon the Boston Symphony extends far beyond its sound quality. He has also greatly influenced its general repertory, its approach to 20th-century music, and—as close to his heart as anything—its educational activities. Moreover, he has never ceased growing either in his artistic interests or technical skills. He has championed the works of contemporary masters like Olivier Messiaen and Michael Tippett, even though he sometimes has been criticized for not paying enough attention to new music; he is a proven master of large-scale spectacular works, starting with those of Hector Berlioz; and he excels in established 20th-century repertory as represented by the music of Ravel, Stravinsky, Bartók, and others. Richard Dyer, music critic of The Boston Globe and as close an Ozawa watcher as there is, concluded last year that, as the conductor neared his 25th anniversary in Boston, he and the Orchestra together were “consistently achieving a higher level of artistic distinction than at any previous point;’ with Ozawa on the point of “arriving at the pinnacle of his career.”

One of Seiji Ozawa’s distinctions is that he, along with Bombay-born Zubin Mehta, led the parade of Eastern musicians across the bridge to Western music. Ozawa was born to Japanese parents in Roten, Manchuria, on September I, 1935. In 1944 the family moved back to Japan at the end of the Japanese occupation of Manchuria. Ozawa recalls that the first Americans he ever saw, as a child, were U.S. airmen conducting a bombing raid near a river in which he was swimming. In 1953, with the approval of his father, a dentist, he entered the Toho School of Music in Tokyo, headed by the cellist and conductor Hideo Saito, where both Eastern and Western musical styles were taught. His first idea was to become a pianist, but when he injured both hands while playing rugby he switched his studies to conducting and composition, and promptly went on to win first prizes in both at the Toho School.

But even though he received several conducting assignments in Japan, Ozawa decided that he needed further experience in Europe. With characteristic enterprise, he talked the Honda motorbike company into letting him promote its product in Europe. He rode his machine to Besançon in France, where he won a unanimous first prize at the International Competition of Orchestra Conductors.

Equally important, he attracted the attention of a Finnish diplomat and music-lover named Piltti Heiskanen, who felt that Ozawa would profit greatly from studies at the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood. Heiskanen introduced Ozawa to Charles Munch, then the BSO’s conductor, who was in Europe at the time, and he also sent a letter of recommendation to Dr. Koussevitzky’s widow, Olga. The result was that the young Japanese conductor was granted a full fellowship for the summer of 1960. And, to repeat an oft-told story, since he spoke little English (he still has his difficulties with the language), he had to find his way to the right bus at Logan Airport with the help of a hand-lettered sign that said “LENOX, MASS.”

At Tanglewood, Ozawa studied conducting with Eleazar de Carvalho and won the $500 Koussevitzky Prize. Afterwards he went to Berlin, where he worked with Herbert von Karajan. There he also encountered Leonard Bernstein, who had heard of his Tanglewood exploits. It was Bernstein who offered Ozawa his first American job, as an assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic for the 1961-62 season.

In New York, he lost no time displaying his ability to manage an orchestra. In a book entitled (perhaps a bit prematurely) Who Killed Classical Music?, British author Norman Lebrecht recalls a revealing anecdote told by Ronald Wilford, the head of Columbia Artists Management, Inc. The three assistant conductors of the Philharmonic had been assigned to do acoustical tests at the then new and as yet unopened Philharmonic Hall at Lincoln Center. For the first two young conductors, the musicians played slackly and inattentively. Then Ozawa’s turn came. “Suddenly,” said Wilford, “I see this kid, Seiji, run up on the stage and the musicians are like somebody bolted them back in their chairs, posture perfect, edge of their seats, and they played.”

Over the next decade, Ozawa played a number of regular engagements with the New York Philharmonic. He also became artistic director of the Ravinia Festival in Chicago, and was appointed music director first of the Toronto Symphony, and then of the San Francisco Symphony, which he conducted on a European tour. He guest-conducted the Boston Symphony at Symphony Hall, was named an artistic director at Tanglewood, and returned from time to time for concerts in Japan. Yet despite this solid record of achievement and experience, his appointment to the Boston podium came as a surprise to many.

Certainly on the face of it he scarcely seemed to fit the mold of music director of the Boston Symphony. Koussevitzky had been succeeded first by Munch, who was followed by Erich Leinsdorf and William Steinberg—all able conductors of traditional European background. Koussevitzky, as is well-known, had wanted the young Leonard Bernstein named to succeed him when he retired in 1949. To some, “Lenny” would have been a natural—Massachusetts-bred, Tanglewood’s most notable alumnus, and a musician of undoubted genius. On the other hand, he was young, brash, and unpredictable; whatever the reason, he was passed over and went on to achieve his glory and fame in New York-a city and orchestra perhaps better suited to his temperament. If the Boston trustees ever had second thoughts about missing out on Bernstein—and it admittedly is questionable whether they actually did—they certainly found in the dynamic Ozawa a conductor who had some of the same qualities of youthfulness, energy, excitement, and novelty.

Although critics have been known to cavil from time to time at an Ozawa performance, particularly of the pre-Romantic repertory, he has never lost his hold on audiences, not only in Boston but wherever the Orchestra performs. He himself has offered this description of the Orchestra: “It sounds like a large chamber-music ensemble in the sense that all 100 or so players listen to each other. Their music is based on chamber music-making. It is reflected in the beauty of the string sound, the fantastic soloists in the wind section.” He is always careful to credit his musicians (the majority of whom were engaged during his regime) for the success of his performances. “I feel like I’m driving a Rolls Royce,” he said. “I just push the pedal and steer.”

Nevertheless, controversy is not unknown in the Orchestra’s ranks. Perhaps inevitably for one who has held so prominent a musical post for so long, rumors of Ozawa’s possible departure from Boston crop up from time to time—most recently two years ago, during a brief outburst of disharmony involving two of his top instrumentalists, concertmaster Malcolm Lowe and principal cellist Jules Eskin, who wrote a letter of complaint alleging excessive overtime at Tanglewood as well as general “rehearsal mismanagement.” The administration sprang to the defense of its music director, the climate has since improved, the Orchestra’s performance level was never impaired, and Ozawa’s comment at the time seems still appropriate: “To do the level of work I want to do, I must stay. . . . The kind of work I want to do together with my orchestra takes time; I cannot do it in five years, or in 23.”

Ozawa has led the Boston Symphony on extensive tours both abroad and in the United States. In observance of the Orchestra’s 100th anniversary in 1982 he took it on a worldwide swing, including a tour of Japan. His own guest-conducting schedule, while perhaps more selective than those of some other top conductors, has grown impressively, even encompassing operatic performances at the Metropolitan, La Scala, and Vienna Staatsoper. In turn, outside guest conductors have recently been playing a substantial role in Boston, with the highly respected Bernard Haitink named principal guest conductor in 1995. Other important appointments at around the same time were Keith Lockhart as conductor of the Boston Pops and Anthony Fogg as artistic administrator, with the announced function of working closely with Ozawa “in the areas of repertory and artists.”

Understandably, Ozawa has long been an active presence in the Far East, where he is held in almost awesome respect as the first Japanese conductor to conquer the West. In 1984 he founded the Saito Kinen Orchestra in memory of Hideo Saito, his first mentor. Five years ago, he established the Saito Kinen Festival, an annual ten-day teaching and performing center in Matsumoto, Japan. Ozawa’s family has continued to be based in Japan, although his two children always came to Tanglewood for their summer vacations. Now in their twenties, they have been spending more and more time in America. His daughter Seira worked as assistant to the director of Britten’s opera Peter Grimes at its Tanglewood production in the summer of 1996.

Recordings by Ozawa with the-Boston nave been plentiful, now totaling around 130 CDs on 10 labels with some 50 different composers represented. Just to enumerate a few: for Philips, he has done a complete cycle of Mahler symphonies, Richard Strauss’s Elektra, and Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder. For EMI, “The American Album” with violinist ltzhak Perlman, encompassing violin music by Bernstein, Barber, and Foss. For Deutsche Grammophon, Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream incidental music and Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker. For RCA, Berlioz’s Requiem and Fauré’s Requiem. For Sony Classical, Strauss’s Don Quixote and a disc offering Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, and Saint-Saëns’s Carnival of the Animals.

Impressive as have been his accomplishments both as a performing and a recording artist, perhaps no aspect of Ozawa’s career will be more enduring than his contribution to the Tanglewood Music Center, the Boston Symphony’s great summer training program-cum-festival. In 1994 his Tanglewood legacy was enshrined architecturally with the opening of the Seiji Ozawa Hall, a beautiful 180-seat concert facility, financed principally by Norio Ohga, president and CEO of the Sony Corporation, and named by him for his fellow countryman.

But Ozawa’s involvement with Tanglewood goes far beyond the opening of a new edifice, no matter how striking. He loves the place. Speaking at the opening of the Seiji Ozawa Hall he said: “For two months each year we live together, work together, experience the joy of music and landscape together. This is the spirit that welcomed me when I first went to Charles Munch and asked him, ‘Would you teach me?’ This is the spirit I hope to pass on to others at Tanglewood.”

Ozawa, accordingly, is very much a visible as well as an audible presence on the Tanglewood scene every summer. As a conductor he has displayed an ability to put together programs that are an adroit mixture of unusual works and crowd-pleasers. As a teacher he works with the faculty in observing and evaluating the student body, starting with an opening-day address in which he reminds them that he, too, is a living example of what Tanglewood is an about: “When I came here, I thought I had enough training and enough of music school. But I found completely new things that I had missed for myself. . . .When you have music in your mind, and see beautiful nature all around, as you do here, the two things together, then suddenly you see why God gave us music, and if you see that, you know why you are here.”

Although many fine musicians have left their mark on Tanglewood, three stand out as its prime shapers—Serge Koussevitzky, who established it; Leonard Bernstein, the star of its first graduating class who remained actively involved in it for 50 summers; and Seiji Ozawa, who has created its modern format and has pointed it in new directions. Ozawa himself is well aware of this process of growth, change, and continuity, to the passing of old traditions to youthful hands. “Koussevitzky was big papa to Lenny, and Lenny was big papa to me,” is the way he once put it, as he walked cheerfully across the grass from a conducting class with the students to a rehearsal session with the Orchestra.

One of these years, no doubt, there will be a new big papa both at Tanglewood and in Boston. But until he comes, Seiji Ozawa, the Musician of the Year, still only 62, can look back contentedly on a quarter-century-and more-of achievement.

Herbert Kupferberg, a senior editor of Parade magazine, is the author of Tanglewood (McGraw-Hill) and other books on music.