What Makes Seiji Run?

By Michael Walsh

On a terrace overlooking Lake Fuschl near Salzburg, Seiji Ozawa and Yo-Yo Ma are deep in conversation. "Remember that discussion about whether an Oriental can do Western music?" asks the Japanese conductor in heavily accented English. Ma does. "Music can be learned, really, by anybody who cares to know it well enough and deeply enough," says the cellist, who is of Chinese parentage but as American as a baseball cap.

In Asia, Ma notes, "conforming is more important than being an individual. That becomes hard when you have a talent. You have to speak up, you have to say, 'I have an opinion.' But when I'm in the Orient, I'm not supposed to have an opinion. I try to respect the differences." Ozawa, 51, looks at his young colleague uneasily. "Can you do that?" he wonders, and then suddenly addresses an unseen camera. "This question is very serious," he says. "This is very private." Blackout.

This unusual glimpse into guarded emotions can be found in Ozawa, airing on PBS March 27. Shot in 1984 by Albert and the late David Maysles, it is a backstage look at one of classical music's best-known yet least understood figures. Ozawa has been music director of the Boston Symphony since 1973, and as one of the world's top maestros, he appears in such musical capitals as Berlin, Paris and Milan. Yet the first East Asian to succeed in a quintessentially Western art form remains solidly Japanese in temperament and outlook. It is this clash of cultures -- and its effect on his music making -- that makes him such a provocative figure.

The son of a Japanese dentist in Occupied Manchuria, Ozawa was exposed to Western music at an early age, and his musical education continued after the family moved back to Japan in 1944. What did it matter that classical music in Japan had a very short history? "Western music is so organized," Ozawa observed last month in Paris, where he was conducting at the Opera. "It is so strong and so logical that it is very easy for every nationality to learn." At the Toho Gakuen School of Music in Tokyo, Ozawa studied conducting with Hideo Saito, who had been a pupil of Cellist Emanuel Feuermann in Germany. Saito was aware his students lacked cultural grounding. "He said that if you know the music and have no tradition, then you must go to Europe," remembers Ozawa. "If you have talent, you should have a very good nose to smell which is good tradition and which is bad."

Accordingly, when Ozawa came to the West in 1959 for further study, he knew he had much to learn. What he did not expect was the astonishment that his career presumption would engender. Germans are suspicious enough when an Italian performs Beethoven; what could a Japanese know? "I realized that what I was doing was strange only when I got to Europe," remembers Ozawa.

Traveling by freighter, he found his way to Italy. Within a couple of years, he had studied with Herbert von Karajan in Berlin and had been named one of Leonard Bernstein's assistants at the New York Philharmonic. At 27, he seemed the embodiment of Japanese musical aspirations when he returned to Tokyo to lead some concerts with Japan's most prestigious orchestra, the NHK Symphony. But his brash ways offended the conservative, prideful musicians. "We won't be bullied by that kid," they declared. In December of 1962, Ozawa stood alone on a podium in front of an ensemble of empty chairs. That day he was forcibly reminded of an old Japanese proverb: "The nail that sticks out is hammered down."

Today Ozawa uneasily straddles both worlds. The exemplar of success in classical music, in Japan he is a role model to thousands of young performers. Yet his exalted position is resented by many; to them, he is still the nail that sticks out. In the West, old questions about how deeply he understands music continue to dog him. His detractors write of his "blank interpretations," and indeed Ozawa has always been more effective in Strauss and Stravinsky showpieces than in Beethoven symphonies. Music that demands depth rather than flash taxes him. He has taken up opera in Europe, but his strengths and weaknesses remain the same: his Elektra in Paris was the work of a master colorist but lacked the manic intensity that others generate.

Ozawa shrugs off criticism that he is culturally unsuited to some repertoires: "Once, as an encore after a recital in Japan, Feuermann played a Japanese tune -- pentatonic, with delicate quarter-tone shadings. Everyone said it was the best performance of that melody in history." Yet Japanese performers, educators and critics admit that the lack of real comprehension is the greatest hindrance to Japanese musicians' acceptance in the West. Students too are often taught to emulate their sensei (teachers) rather than to think for themselves. Perhaps it is no contradiction that Saito's most flamboyant pupil is also his staunchest admirer.

Torn between his two lives, Ozawa has sent his wife Vera and their two children back to live in Japan, and he returns to their Tokyo home often. Yet a full-time career in Japan would be too limiting for a conductor mentioned as a potential successor to Karajan in Berlin. Although there have long been predictions of his imminent departure from Boston, Ozawa speaks confidently of his future with the orchestra (his only permanent post). He is, he says, content.

But is he? A Japanese born in China, raised a Christian in a predominantly Shintoist-Buddhist country, married to a woman whose father was Russian, Ozawa has had a divided life, symbolizing on many levels the duality that every Japanese musician in the West faces. "Sometimes I say, 'Why I become Western music musician?' " he muses in the film. "I think that made my life much more interesting, and much more exciting. Of course, I have to pay price."

Given the continuing influx of Asian performers, Ozawa's perspective is one worth heeding. "Western music is like the sun," he says. "All over the world, the sunset is different, but the beauty is the same. Maybe there is a way to make a marriage between this Oriental blood and Western music."