Acclaimed Japanese conductor Seiji Ozawa, who led the Boston Symphony Orchestra, dies at age 88

FILE – Former Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra Seiji Ozawa conducts the orchestra during a rehearsal of Berlioz’s “Symphonie Fantastique,” at Symphony Hall, in Boston, on Nov. 26, 2008. World-renowned conductor Ozawa has died of heart failure at his home in Tokyo, his management office said Friday, Feb. 9, 2024. He was 88. (AP Photo/Steven Senne, File)

TOKYO (AP) — Seiji Ozawa, the Japanese conductor who amazed audiences with the lithe physicality of his performances during three decades at the helm of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, has died, his management office said Friday. He was 88.

FILE – Conductor Seiji Ozawa stops to greet a young child in the audience as he arrives for a reception for himself and the other Kennedy Center Honors honorees in the East Room of the White House in Washington on Dec. 6, 2015. Japanese conductor Ozawa, who has music director for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, has died, his office said Friday, Feb. 9, 2024.(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)

The internationally acclaimed maestro, with his trademark mop of salt-and-pepper hair, led the BSO from 1973 to 2002, longer than any other conductor in the orchestra’s history. From 2002 to 2010, he was the music director of the Vienna State Opera.

He died of heart failure Tuesday at his home in Tokyo, according to his office, Veroza Japan.

He remained active in his later years, particularly in his native land. He was the artistic director and founder of the Seiji Ozawa Matsumoto Festival, a music and opera festival in Japan. He and the Saito Kinen Orchestra, which he co-founded in 1984, won the Grammy for best opera recording in 2016 for Ravel’s “L’Enfant et Les Sortileges (The Child and the Spells.)”

FILE – Praemium Imperiale culture award winner conductor Seiji Ozawa of Japan speaks at a press conference in Tokyo, Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2011. Japanese conductor Ozawa, who has music director for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, has died, his office said Friday, Feb. 9, 2024. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi, File)

In 2022, he conducted his Seiji Ozawa Matsumoto Festival for the first time in three years to mark its 30th anniversary. That turned out to be his last public performance.

That year, Ozawa also conducted the Saito Kinen Orchestra to deliver Beethoven’s “Egmont” Overture live to Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata at the International Space Station. The event was co-organized with the Japan Aerospace and Exploration Agency, just as the world was divided by the coronavirus pandemic.

Japanese conductor Seiji Ozawa is seen in this Feb. 2016 photo. World-renowned conductor Ozawa died Tuesday, Feb. 6, due to heart failure at his home in Tokyo, his management office said Friday, Feb. 9, 2024. He was 88. (Kyodo News via AP)

“Music can link the hearts of people — transcending words, borders, religion, and politics. It is my hope that through music, we can be reminded that we are all of the same human race living on the same planet. And that we are united,” Ozawa said in a statement.

Japanese conductor Seiji Ozawa speaks during a press conference in Kyoto, Japan, on Feb. 2016. World-renowned conductor Ozawa died Tuesday, Feb. 6, due to heart failure at his home in Tokyo, his management office said Friday, Feb. 9, 2024. He was 88. (Kyodo News via AP)

Ozawa exerted enormous influence over the BSO during his tenure. He appointed 74 of its 104 musicians and his celebrity attracted famous performers including Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman. He also helped the symphony become the biggest-budget orchestra in the world, with an endowment that grew from less than $10 million in the early 1970s to more than $200 million in 2002.

When Ozawa conducted the Boston orchestra in 2006 — four years after he had left — he received a hero’s welcome with a nearly six-minute ovation.

Ozawa was born Sept. 1, 1935, to Japanese parents in Manchuria, China, while it was under Japanese occupation.

After his family returned to Japan in 1944, he studied music under Hideo Saito, a cellist and conductor credited with popularizing Western music in Japan. Ozawa revered him and formed the Saito Kinen (Saito Memorial) Orchestra in 1984 and eight years later founded the Saito Kinen Festival — renamed the Seiji Ozawa Matsumoto Festival in 2015.

Ozawa first arrived in the United States in 1960 and was quickly hailed by critics as a brilliant young talent. He attended the Tanglewood Music Center and was noticed by Leonard Bernstein, who appointed him assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic for the 1961-62 season. After his New York debut with the Philharmonic at age 25, The New York Times said “the music came brilliantly alive under his direction.”

He directed various ensembles including the San Francisco Orchestra and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra before beginning his tenure in Boston in 1970.

At the time there were few nonwhite musicians on the international scene. Ozawa embraced the challenge and it became his lifelong passion to help Japanese performers demonstrate they could be first-class musicians. In his 1967 book “The Great Conductors,” critic Harold C. Schonberg noted the changing ranks of younger conductors, writing that Ozawa and Indian-born Zubin Mehta were the first Asian conductors “to impress one as altogether major talents.”

FILE – Seiji Ozawa, center, reacts as he greets the audience after a performance with violoncellist Dai Miyata, unseen, and the Mito Chamber Orchestra at Suntory Hall in Tokyo, Sunday, Jan. 22, 2012. World-renowned conductor Ozawa has died of heart failure at his home in Tokyo, his management office said Friday, Feb. 9, 2024. He was 88.(AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi, File)

Ozawa had considerable star quality and crossover appeal in Boston, where he was a well-known fan of the Red Sox and Patriots sports teams. In 2002, Catherine Peterson, executive director of Arts Boston, a nonprofit group that markets Boston’s arts, told The Associated Press that “for most people in this community, Seiji personifies the Boston Symphony.”

FILE – Former Boston Symphony conductor Seiji Ozawa poses for photographers during a press conference in Tokyo on April 3, 2013. World-renowned conductor Ozawa has died of heart failure at his home in Tokyo, his management office said Friday, Feb. 9, 2024. He was 88. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi, File)

Ozawa is largely credited with elevating the Tanglewood Music Center, a music academy in Lenox, Massachusetts, to international prominence. In 1994, a 1,200-seat, $12 million music hall at the center was named for him.

His work at Tanglewood was not without controversy. In 1996, as music director of the orchestra and its ultimate authority, he decided to move the respected academy in new directions. Ozawa ousted Leon Fleisher, the longtime director of Tanglewood, and several prominent teachers quit in protest.

FILE – Seiji Ozawa, front right, conducts violoncellist Dai Miyata, left in front, with the Mito Chamber Orchestra at Suntory Hall in Tokyo, Sunday, Jan. 22, 2012. World-renowned conductor Ozawa has died of heart failure at his home in Tokyo, his management office said Friday, Feb. 9, 2024. He was 88. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi, File)

Despite glowing reviews for his performances in Europe and Japan, American critics were increasingly disappointed in the later years of his tenure with the BSO. In 2002, Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times wrote that Ozawa had become, after a bold start, “an embodiment of the entrenched music director who has lost touch.”

Many of the orchestra’s musicians agreed and even circulated an anti-Ozawa newsletter claiming he had worn out his welcome in Boston. But the city, marking his 85th birthday in 2020, announced it designated Sept. 1 as (asterisk)Seiji Ozawa Day.(asterisk)

Ozawa won two Emmy awards for TV work with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the first in 1976 for the BSO’s PBS series “Evening at Symphony” and the second in 1994, for Individual Achievement in Cultural Programming, for “Dvorak in Prague: A Celebration.”

Ozawa held honorary doctorates of music from the University of Massachusetts, the New England Conservatory of Music, and Wheaton College in Norton, Mass. He was one of five honorees at the annual Kennedy Center Honors in 2015 for contributing to American culture through the arts.

FILE – Seiji Ozawa, center, reacts as he greets the audience after a performance with violoncellist Dai Miyata, unseen, and the Mito Chamber Orchestra at Suntory Hall in Tokyo, Sunday, Jan. 22, 2012. World-renowned conductor Ozawa has died of heart failure at his home in Tokyo, his management office said Friday, Feb. 9, 2024. He was 88.(AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi, File)

In later years, Ozawa’s health deteriorated. He canceled some appearances in 2015-16 for health reasons, including what would have been his first return to the Tanglewood music festival — the summer home of the Boston symphony — in a decade.

Messages of condolence poured in from around the world, including orchestras in Vienna and Berlin, musicians and residents of Matsumoto.

“The Boston Symphony Orchestra remembers Maestro Ozawa not only as a legendary conductor, but also as a passionate mentor for future generations of musicians, generously offering his time to education and master classes,” the symphony said in a statement.

Seiji Ozawa conducts Boston Symphony Orchestra in Fukuoka, western Japan, March 1978. World-renowned conductor Ozawa has died of heart failure at his home in Tokyo, his management office said Friday, Feb. 9, 2024. He was 88. (Kyodo News via AP)

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra Chairman Daniel Froschauer said in his comment posted on X, formerly Twitter, that Ozawa “has left a great artistic legacy with the Vienna Philharmonic. We will sorely miss Seiji Ozawa as a friend and musical partner. Our thoughts are with his family.”

Japanese maestro Yutaka Sado, who studied under Ozawa and Leonard Bernstein and now serves the music director at the Tokyo-based New Japan Philharmonic, which Ozawa founded, told NHK public television that Ozawa was the one who inspired him to be a conductor. “I’ve kept following his back, but I could never catch up with him no matter how hard I tried.”

Ozawa’s management office said his funeral was attended only by close relatives as his family wished to have a quiet farewell.

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Moritsugu reported from Beijing.