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Seiji Ozawa, born 1935
Seiji Ozawa made history in 1972 when he accepted the Boston Symphony Orchestra's offer to serve as music director for its 1973–74 season, thus becoming the youngest principal conductor and the first of Asian heritage to helm that storied orchestra. Mentored earlier in his career by the legendary Leonard Bernstein, who hired him as an assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic in 1960, Ozawa was only twenty-five when he took the podium at Carnegie Hall for his debut with that orchestra in 1961. His association with the Philharmonic was followed by conducting duties for several major North American orchestras, including the Chicago, Toronto, and San Francisco symphonies. But it was during his twenty-nine seasons in Boston (1973–2002) that Ozawa solidified his reputation as a brilliant and facile conductor who relished classical and romantic repertory but who also delighted in championing a range of challenging works by modern composers
Jerome De Perlinghi, 2001 |