Japanese chef Seiji Ozawa died on February 6 in Tokyo at the age of 88. His recording career, which began in 1965, includes more than 150 recordings for several major labels in all musical genres. Return to this journey with a selection of several essential albums.
After his victories in the Besançon and Tanglewood conducting competitions at the turn of the 1960s, the start of his career (1935-2024) was supervised by Charles Munch, Herbert von Karajan and Leonard Bernstein. He obtained the direction of the summer concerts of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1964 and the position of musical director of that of Toronto in 1965.
These blessed years from 1962 to 1965 saw the emergence of three exceptional young chefs: Seiji Ozawa, Claudio Abbado and Zubin Mehta. In 1965, Zubin Mehta recorded, on January 11 and 15, his first disc (Respighi, Strauss) in Los Angeles for RCA, Abbado dazzled with the 2e Symphony by Mahler at the Salzburg Festival on August 14, while Ozawa enters the studio on May 17 to record… a Oboe Concerto by Vivaldi! RCA will mainly delegate him, in 1965 and 1966, to accompaniment of concertos.
Toronto, already
The serious things will begin in Toronto on the 1ster December 1966 with a recording forgotten by everyone… wrongly! A Fantastic Symphony under high voltage. The interpretation is not very personal, but who else not named Charles Munch has done better in this vein? During the same sessions, but for Columbia, Ozawa recorded a disc of Canadian music (MacMillan, Freedman, Mercure, Morel) never reissued on CD outside Japan.
A year later, he recorded in Toronto the album that really drew attention to him: the Turangalîla-Symphony by Messiaen, to which is added November Steps by Takemitsu. Particularly edifying re-listening at a time when the Toronto Orchestra releases a new recording under the direction of its conductor Gustavo Gimeno which sounds so watered down compared to the impact of Ozawa’s baton!
RCA perceived that Ozawa’s qualities of clarity, impact and precision would hit the mark with the Chicago Orchestra and, at the end of the 1960s, recorded a Rite of Spring (1968) which, like great wines, seems to improve with the years. This is “the” great Ozawa-Chicago-RCA recording. This cutting style is documented in Symphonies no 5 of Beethoven and, above all, of Tchaikovsky and a Unfinished Symphony wrongly forgotten. If we insist on this period, it is because, Ozawa having left RCA Victor in 1969, these recordings were withdrawn from the catalog and rarely reissued.
It is still RCA which documents the first Ozawa-Boston meetings, in 1969: Carmina Burana and the aftermath of Fire BirdAnd Petrouchka. Very good, but not decisive.
In 1969, EMI became interested in the Chicago-Ozawa tandem and Ozawa changed labels. Not necessarily a good idea, because if EMI’s sound engineers were recording aces, it would be known. The first disc, Scheherazade by Rimsky-Korsakov, is haloed, just like the second, the Concerto for orchestra by Bartók. In 1970 a masterpiece arrived: the coupling of Concerto for orchestra of Lutosławski and the Sinfonietta by Janáček. In 1969, Charles Munch died shortly after the creation of the Orchester de Paris. EMI had Ozawa record records in Paris, but the conductor came across mediocre sound recordist Paul Vavasseur. It is very unfortunate for Fire Bird, so aesthetically beautiful. We will see Ozawa again at EMI in the 1980s.
Nectar in Boston
Chief’s primary publisher will be Universal, with labels Philips and DG. The association with Philips began in 1974 in Paris (symphony “ Pathetic”), in London (9e by Beethoven) and in San Francisco (3e by Beethoven and 9e by Dvořák), the one with DG in 1972 in San Francisco with an album Romeo and Juliet combining Berlioz, Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev and a Bernstein/Russo disc. Of these largely forgotten recordings, the Romeo and Juliet and the Bernstein/Russo of DG as well as the 9e by Beethoven with the New Philharmonia (Philips) are the most interesting.
In the 1970s, Ozawa became primarily a Deutsche Grammophon artist, a label that documented his association with the Boston Symphony, beginning in 1973 with the Fantastic Symphony. By recording Berlioz and Ravel, Ozawa and DG will above all cultivate the image of Boston as “the best French orchestra in the world”, shaped during the mandates of Pierre Monteux and Charles Munch.
Chef Stéphane Denève told us the day Ozawa’s death was announced: “There was something prodigious about him, a plasticity. I have always loved this somewhat tai chi side in the way of constantly rounding the corners, yet with an incredible intensity in the gesture and the sound. » The first twenty years of the Boston era embody this, which we find magnified in the coupling Tomb of Couperin, My mother the goose And Spanish rhapsody by Ravel, recorded in 1974, and in a magical Fauré disc (Pelléas and Mélisande, Dolly, Pavane, Elegy) from 1986, despite the sacrilege of hearing the “Chanson de Mélisande” sung in English.
On the Berlioz slope, the complete Romeo and Juliet holds the upper hand. Among the many recordings of the great repertoire, the Respighi trilogy, the 1D Symphony by Brahms, an excellent 5e Symphony by Tchaikovsky (again), the complete ballet Romeo and Juliet by Prokofiev, a Bartók record, but above all, in our eyes, The tricorn by Manuel de Falla with Teresa Berganza and her much forgotten 1D Symphony by Mahler in 1977 (with the addition of the “Blumine” movement) stand out.
Essential, because they are referential: the concertos of Berg and Stravinsky with Itzhak Perlman and the 2e Violin Concerto by Shostakovich with Gidon Kremer.
The mess
In 1980, an infinite and difficult to define field opened up for 30 years: the era of the compact disc. With Barenboïm, Levine, Mehta and Maazel, in particular, Ozawa is one of these “purveyors of good recordings”. He will contribute to the catalogs of DG, Philips, EMI, Sony, RCA, Erato, and even the audiophile label Telarc, for which he will record Beethoven’s five piano concertos with Rudolf Serkin. It is this plethora (Tchaikovsky in Berlin for EMI and DG, Dvořák in Vienna for Philips, complete Mahler for Philips), never bad, rarely transcendent, which dilutes his image a little.
Our recommendations, in this digital era, are, at DG with orchestras other than Boston, Joan of Arc at the stake by Honegger with Marthe Keller and George Wilson in Paris and, in Berlin, a sumptuous 2e Piano concerto by Prokofiev with Yundi Li.
There is nothing imperishable in the dozen EMI or Erato CDs, other than the documentation of the creation of Shadows of Time, last composition by Henri Dutilleux. On the other hand, so many treasures from Philips, including two Schoenberg discs: the Gurrelieder with Jessye Norman and a little-known CD: the coupling of Transfigured night with Apollon Musagète by Stravinsky with the Saito Kinen Orchestra. Schoenberg is also one of the transcribers of Bach’s works in a spectacular and sublime CD from 1990.
From Takemitsu, dear to the chef’s heart, we highlight the CD combining the remake of November Steps to the splendid Concerto for viola. Finally, two CDs of the great repertoire: the Tchaikovsky-Sibelius coupling which marked the debut of violinist Viktoria Mullova and the New Year’s concert in Vienna in 2002, a vintage to be ranked just behind those of Karajan and Kleiber. For two major scores linked to Ozawa, Oedipus Rex by Stravinsky and Carmina Burana, we prefer video versions to parallel discographic recordings.
Ozawa returned to Columbia/RCA (Sony) shortly before the digital era, accompanying the Ravel album (Scheherazade, Madecassian songs, etc.) by Frederica von Stade. It will have a sequel with Summer nights And The chosen lady (Berlioz/Debussy) in 1983, major records in their time, still beautiful, but with a little slurred diction. Ozawa, who remains a sought-after accompanist (remarkable 3e Concerto by Rachmaninoff with Kissin and 1er Concerto by Tchaikovsky with Volodos), convinced Sony to record him conducting Mozart with the Mito Chamber Orchestra. The major document of this late period is rather the 2e Symphony by Mahler in concert in Tokyo in 2000 with the Saito Kinen Orchestra. His first and (almost) last Mahler will therefore have marked his love for this composer.