The famous conductor, probably the first internationally renowned conductor of Asian origin, has died at 88. Obituaries rightly focus on his long tenure as music director of the Boston Symphony, but they also mention his time at San Francisco, which he passed through in 1970-76 with the same hoopla with which he arrived at Boston, for which he rather crassly abandoned us. I remember Ozawa at SFS; attending it under his direction was my introduction to symphony concerts.
I can best express an honest, unfettered reaction to Ozawa by reproducing what I wrote about him a decade ago in an entry on SFS music directors whose work I've known:
Ozawa, one of the first of the many Leonard Bernstein protégés to be launched on the conducting world, was brought in with the level of hoopla that would later accompany MTT's arrival in 1995, only in 1970 style. He was young! (35 at the time) He had a Beatles haircut! He wore a turtleneck sweater while conducting! He was announced with pop art posters! Unfortunately, unlike MTT, he didn't live up to the hype. His conducting was unexciting, his repertoire choices wayward. (I liked his penchant for obscure Haydn symphonies, but others didn't; even Herb Caen carped about it occasionally.) The orchestra had terrible flaws in technique during Ozawa's tenure, and the conductor got caught up in debilitating personnel wars when he tried to do something about it. I recently picked up a CD re-release of their recording of Dvorak's Symphony from the New World; it perfectly captures the blatty sound of the SFS of those days, and listening to it made me drip with nostalgia (which proves you don't have to like something to be nostalgic for it).
Ozawa's greatest sin, however, was that, though he'd assured everyone he was committed to San Francisco and wouldn't be just a jet-setting hired hand dropping in every now and then, after only three years on the job he accepted simultaneously the music directorship of the Boston Symphony. It was hard to believe he could devote sufficient attention to both at once, and soon afterwards he gave up SFS entirely for Boston, where critical consensus is that he stultified a great orchestra for an enormous tenure of thirty years. He's never been back, but he did leave one great legacy in San Francisco: He created a permanent symphony chorus, instead of hiring community groups whenever we needed one; the result has been continually one of SFS's most solid assets.
He also hired Robin Sutherland.
ReplyDeleteHis whole tenure at the BSO was not stultifying, as I understand it, but he was definitely there much too long.
A search of the Chron archive turns up an SFS pension fund concert that Ozawa conducted in 2001. I might query them as to whether there were others.
ReplyDeleteCertainly not for a regular subscription concert. That I would have noticed. The distinction from de Waart, Blomstedt, MTT, and even Krips is glaring.
DeleteI asked SFS about Ozawa's appearances after he left as MD. Here's the response:
ReplyDelete* January 11-14, 1978 – Tchaikovsky Swan Lake
* January 18-21, 1978 – Brahms Symphony No. 3 & Roger Sessions When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd
* November 9, 1986 – Pension Fund Concert – Ravel’s La Valse, Schumann’s Symphony No. 2, and Kei Anjo’s Who-ei for Erh-hu and Orchestra
* February 23, 1993 – Pension Fund Concert – Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 and Bernstein’s The Age of Anxiety
* October 29, 2001 – Pension Fund Concert – Beethoven’s Symphony No. 8 and Berlioz Symphonie fantastique
Ozawa also came to Davies Symphony Hall with the BSO twice (March 12, 1981 and February 13, 1996) and Saito Kinen Orchestra once (January 7, 2001).
That was me posting at 1:00 pm about Ozawa at SFS. The browser on my work computer didn't let me sign in, so it's anonymous.
ReplyDeleteSince pension fund concerts are not listed as public appearances, that means his only return was a two-week stint soon after his departure. I maintain that my statement that he never returned is fundamentally correct even if not strictly accurate, especially when contrasted with the frequent reappearances of each one of his successors.
DeleteI mean what I say.
DeleteThe list of de Waart's appearances proves my point. Throughout most of Blomstedt's tenure, he appeared for subscription concerts regularly - something I pointed out in the original article from which my piece on Ozawa was excerpted - and if he stopped afterwards, it's still a lot closer to Blomstedt's own returns than it is to the truly anemic list of Ozawa. The idea that you can negate my point about Ozawa by going to the trouble of researching and posting that pathetic thing is complete nonsense.
You started with "[Ozawa's] never been back." Two subscription programs and three pension fund concerts is, indeed, a tiny number, but it's not "never" as I understand the meaning of "never". Maybe you meant "He's never been much of a presence in SF since he went to Boston," which is true.
ReplyDeleteIf you'd said that from the beginning - the spirit of what I said was true even if it wasn't technically accurate - I would have acknowledged it and agreed with you. But instead, you produced this anemic list - ONE two-week residency the year after he departed, and a couple of special concerts outside of the regular subscription list - with the triumphant implication that there was no difference between that and Blomstedt's annual returns for decades on end. They've both been back, q.e.d.! I cannot take that line of argument seriously, it's a pure technical quibble that misses the point.
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