Word: ozawa
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...what the music world calls the Great Conductor Hunt, one of the choicest quarries has been shaggy-haired Seiji Ozawa, 32, conductor of the Toronto Symphony. He is gifted enough to have been considered a prospect for two of the nation's top orchestras, New York and Chicago (TIME, Jan. 19). Last week the San Francisco Symphony announced that it had bagged Ozawa for itself, starting in the fall of 1970. Retiring Viennese Conductor Josef Krips, 65, who in the past five years has rebuilt San Francisco into one of the nation's solid second-rank ensembles...
...Toronto Symphony's Seiji Ozawa, 32, a Japanese and the only Oriental besides Mehta to flourish on Western podiums, is no less a dynamic charmer than Mehta. A favorite of young people, he sports a Beatle hairdo and a free-swinging style in the manner of Leonard Bernstein. Sometimes he indulges his expressive stick technique to paint panels of sheer sound, but he can also propel vibrant, vivacious performances as notable for their substance as for their sheen...
Last week Takemitsu's latest piece, which had been commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, received its world premiere in Manhattan under the assured baton of Seiji Ozawa. Confirming Ozawa's observation that Takemitsu "paints in watercolors," November Steps created a 23-minute mood of hushed mystery that was almost visual in its stunning impact. The strings whirred and chattered, spinning out a web of shimmering sonority into which the winds and brass poked tiny pin points, like stars among scudding clouds. Through it all one black-and-grey-robed soloist warbled the mournful, breathy tones...
...Western music seemed about as freakish as Heifetz playing the one-string ichigenkin. Now all that has changed. In the past few years, American and European concert halls have experienced something close to a full-scale invasion by talented Korean and Japanese musicians. Last week, Japan's Seiji Ozawa, 32, conducted programs of Rossini and Hindemith in Canada; Korean Violinist Young Uck Kim, 20, performed Saint-Saëns' Concerto No. 3 in Corpus Christi, Texas; and an eight-year-old Japanese cherub named Hitomi Kasuya played part of a Mozart violin concerto in Albuquerque and in South...
Says Conductor Ozawa: "After the war, you could find little grocery stores in the Japanese countryside selling cheap violins side by side with candy bars. The people needed an outlet, and music was the perfect thing." Violins were easier to make than brass or woodwind instruments. Moreover, the stringed instruments were physically ideal for the Orientals: their nimble fingers, so proficient in delicate calligraphy and other crafts, adapted easily to the demands of the fingerboard...