Ozawa

[Conchis]

I have only one recording by this conductor (Jeanne D'Arc Au Bucher, commonly agreed to be his best) and would be interested in hearing opinions on his work.

He was the first winner of the Karajan conducting competition and still (I think) the only one to have established an international career.

[Pulcinella]

I remember (and might have mentioned before; if so, apologies) a performance of Beethoven's ninth that he conducted in Liverpool which must have been very early in his career, perhaps just after he won the competition? Rita Hunter was one of the soloists, and I met her backstage, where she signed my copy of the CfP Götterdämmerung highlights that had been released that very day! She was surprised that I had a copy, as she had been lookng for one to give to her mother in Wallasey, where I guess she was staying.
But back on topic....

I'm not sure what is thought of his time with the Boston Symphony Orchestra: solid rather than inspired, I suspect.
I have his recording of the Respighi Toman trilogy with them, but little else with him as conductor that I can think of, apart from the Ravel concerto and Prokofiev 3 with Weissenberg and the O de Paris.
His early recording of Turangalila with the Toronto Symphony is well thought of though, isn't it? I used to have it on LP; I don't think that the Takemitsu coupling (fourth side) has made it to CD yet.

[cloughie]

I have many of Seiji's recordings and most are excellent - Respighi, Ravel, Stravinsky, Mahler, R Strauss, Wagner, Mussoursky, Tchaikovsky, Bizet, Berlioz, Beethoven and Bartok, and a bit of Ives and Takimetsu - yes I like him, but you may not - not everyone on these boards likes Mehta, Maazel and Previn. I think Pulc's 'solid rather than inspired' tag underrates Ozawa! Oh yes Faure - good largely orchestral set on DG, and a Requiem on RCA (with Barbara Bonney singing the Pie Jesu).

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Mnnyah.

I remember a magnificent French Radio broadcast (one afternoon on R3) of a Live Gurrelieder with Jessye Norman, which was absolutely fantastic (a friend of mine -
you understand - had a cassette recording from the broadcast, which I heard a couple - a couple, you understand - of times to confirm just how good it was); much better than the good studio recording he made. I think he is/was much better in concert than his recordings suggest - none of which do very much for me. I remember the Ives Fourth Symphony as being by some distance the very worst recording of that work ever submitted to disc (I was doing my BA Thesis on the work at the time I heard it) - utterly clueless!

[Pulcinella]

I think Pulc's 'solid rather than inspired' tag underrates Ozawa!

Happy to stand corrected.
I did say 'suspect', and I similarly suspect that the rather staid Boston audiences may have had an influence. But I'm probably being unfair and speaking from assumption rather than knowledge.
Perhaps it was hard to follow Koussevitsky and Munch, in particular, and I wonder what commissions were made/performed during Ozawa's period there.
Tippett's Mask of Time springs to mind, but Ozawa did not conduct that.

[richardfinegold]

The conventional thinking on Ozawa is that he squandered his early promise by becoming a globe trotting superstar, running the BSO on autopilot, his position secured for 30 years by Japanese donors. His early recordings are thought to be his best work, particularly his CSO recordings.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I wonder what commissions were made/performed during Ozawa's period there.

Besides the Tippett, the BSO Centenary Commissions included Sessions' Concerto for Orchestra and Panufnik's Sinfonia Votiva (both of which Ozawa recorded), PMD's Second Symphony and Bernstein's Divertimento (both, I believe, premiered by their composers). And other stuff, too:

http://www.bso.org/brands/bso/about-us/historyarchives/archival-collection/bso-commissions.aspx

... which shows that Ozawa was Chief Conductor when the orchestra commissioned works by (amongst many others) Cage, Dutillieux, Goehr, Henze, Schuller, Tippett (The Rose Lake as well as Mask).

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

ClassicFM puts him amongst the "16 Greatest Conductors of All Time" - a list that includes Berlioz, but not Furtwangler!




You may well think that - I couldn't possibly comment.

[Pulcinella]

Besides the Tippett, the BSO Centenary Commissions included Sessions' Concerto for Orchestra and Panufnik's Sinfonia Votiva (both of which Ozawa recorded), .......

Forgot that I had that CD.

[Conchis]

I remember (and might have mentioned before; if so, apologies) a performance of Berthoven's ninth that he conducted in Liverpool which must have been very early in his career, perhaps just after he won the competition? Rita Hunter was one of the soloists, and I met her backstage, where she signed my copy of the CfP Götterdämmerung highlights that had been released that very day! She was surprised that I had a copy, as she had been lookng for one to give to her mother in Wallasey, where I guess she was staying.
But back on topic....

I'm not sure what is thought of his time with the Boston Symphony Orchestra: solid rather than inspired, I suspect.
I have his recording of the Respighi Toman trilogy with them, but little else with him as conductor that I can think of, apart from the Ravel concerto and Prokofiev 3 with Weissenberg and the O de Paris.
His early recording of Turangalila with the Toronto Symphony is well thought of though, isn't it? I used to have it on LP; I don't think that the Takemitsu coupling (fourth side) has made it to CD yet.

That must have been around 1972, ten years after he won the Herbie competition. So his career will have been fairly well advanced by then - some recordings on Phillips and, I think, DG - but not yet at the mega-level he achieved in Boston.

[Petrushka]

I saw Ozawa a couple of times with the Boston SO in London in the 1980s (LvB 6 & Stravinsky Rite, Mahler 2) and 'solid rather than inspired' seems a perfectly fair summing up to me. I've got very little, next to nothing in fact, of his recordings but I do remember a Ravel Daphnis and Chloe I bought on LP in 1975 and which I thought was very good. Never got it on CD, though, if it's ever appeared on there.

[Pulcinella]

That must have been around 1972, ten years after he won the Herbie competition. So his career will have been fairly well advanced by then - some recordings on Phillips and, I think, DG - but not yet at the mega-level he achieved in Boston.

You are right: I have just dug out the signed LP sleeve, and it has a production date of 1972.
(I've also corrected the typo: Beethoven, not Berthoven!)

[pastoralguy]

My favourite Ozawa story is that he was offered a rehearsal with the Boston Symphony Orchestra to see if they were a 'fit'. Alas, the Orchestra's season had finished so the rehearsal he was slated for was a 'contractual obligation' before the Orchestra broke up for their summer break. The Orchestra were simply expecting to go through the motions but, as I heard it, this tired Orchestra absolutely played their hearts out for the young conductor who simply galvanised them.

And the rest is history. In my EXTREMELY humble opinion, I've never been terribly excited about his music making although, as a teenager, I learned Prokofiev's 'Romeo and Juliet' from a recording where the tragic couple was the album's theme. The Orchestra was, iirc, the San Francisco Symphony and it made a huge impression on me.

[Conchis]

The BSO's marketing campaign for him apparently included billboard posters bearing the legend: 'PUT A LITTLE OZAWA IN YOUR LIFE!'

[Bryn]

By the way, the Boston Symphony site has downloads (FLAC or mp3) of a 1975 broadcast performance of Turangalila ($9.99 for the FLACs). Beware, the broadcast was in two parts, with applause and announcement after Joie du sang des étoiles in addition to opening and closing announcements and applause. Best to do some editing of the extraneous content in order to fit it onto a single CD.