The Japanese director Seiji OzawaThat He has conducted the most prestigious orchestras in the world and symbolized during a long international career the union between the music of the East and that of the Westhe died at his home in Tokyo at 88 years old.
According to public broadcaster NHK and other Japanese media, Ozawa died on February 6 due to cardiac arrest, but the news was revealed this Friday. The funeral took place privatelyand were attended only by close relatives, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper added.
Ozawa was born in 1935 in the Chinese province of Manchuria, at the time a Japanese colony, and began studying piano in elementary school.
But after breaking two fingers playing rugby -another of his passions- as a teenager he ended up dedicating himself to conducting.
In 1959 he moved abroad and met some of the biggest stars in the world of classical music, including the composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein, for whom he was assistant at the New York Philharmonic during the 1961-1962 season.
The great director Herbert von Karajan also hired him as an assistant the following year at the Berlin Philharmonic.
Ozawa directed orchestras of Chicago and San Franciscoin the United States, e toronto, Canada. She also worked during 29 years old as musical director of the Orchestra Boston Symphonywhere an auditorium is named after him.
In 2002 he became chief conductor of the State Opera Viennain Austria, until 2010.
The end of his career was marked by illness, including a cancer discovered in 2010. At that time, together with his writer friend Haruki Murakami, they decided to record the conversations they had about their musical tastes and the product of those conversations became the book “Music, only music”.
“People think I’m not far from dying, but I will I try with all my might to avoid dying“he joked in 2014, in one of his last appearances before the press.
Source: Clarin
