The people's maestro: At BSO, Ozawa erased barriers
By Geoff Edgers, Globe Staff, 4/18/2002
He buzzed into Tanglewood on a motor scooter, hammed it up at Red Sox games and even led free concerts on the Boston Common. Tonight, as Seiji Ozawa steps onto the Symphony Hall podium to kick off his final concert series, he does so as the man who demystified the music director's role.
He played to the bleacher bums and Esplanade faithful, to the aging subscribers and the children in Roxbury. And through it all - the sometimes harsh criticisms from his players, European tours that pulled him away from Boston - Ozawa maintained his image. He was the BSO's first everyman conductor.
''In the past, symphony conductors were relegated to the stratosphere,'' says Thomas O'Connor, a history professor at Boston College. ''These were men who lived apart. The idea that you would find them out on the street or at a supermarket or a baseball game, that was out of character. But Ozawa is a real person. In the process he developed a personal relationship that made the Boston Symphony a much more democratic institution.''
Not everything has changed at Symphony Hall. The audience Ozawa plays to during his final paid engagement will be very much like the one he met in 1973. The crowd is anywhere from 96 to 98 percent white, according to symphony figures. The BSO has not charted age or affluence of ticket buyers during Ozawa's tenure, though veteran concertgoers say the crowd seems to skew to the older, wealthier side.
''If you look through the program, there is page after page of advertisements for rest homes,'' points out Harvard music professor Kay Kaufman Shelemay.
But Shelemay, who has attended concerts for years, is one of several observers who believe the BSO organization has worked to expand its audience. More concerts and subscription packages have been made available over the years, designed to get more people through the door. The symphony has beefed up its educational programs and added free concerts throughout the city. Ozawa, who will become music director of the Vienna State Opera, has strengthened the relationship between the BSO and its commercial franchise, the Boston Pops.
Symphony conductors traditionally viewed the Pops with either disinterest or disgust. Longtime BSO Music Director Serge Koussevitzky, for example, angrily recanted an invitation to legendary Pops conductor Arthur Fiedler after hearing that the Pops had booked Frank Sinatra for a performance.
''I strongly feel that since your name was associated with a Frank Sinatra show in Boston, it can not remain on the list of guest conductors with the Boston Symphony Orchestra,'' Koussevitzky wrote Fiedler.
Ozawa embraced the Pops. In 1999, he became the first musical director to conduct the Pops on the esplanade, leading them through the ''1812'' Overture.
''Seiji was more focused on the Pops than any conductor before,'' says John Williams, the Pops conductor from 1980 to 1993.
On trips to Fenway Park, Williams noticed how people in the stands - many of whom he expected had never been to Symphony Hall - approached the music director. They wanted autographs and called out to him by his first name.
''Seiji was not the sort of archetype of the grand European gentleman, that of [Charles] Munch or Koussevitzky,'' says Williams. ''He was a younger man who had earlier on dressed in the fashion of the day, who seemed more accessible to younger people, who seemed to be a different kind of icon. The combination of television, Seiji's youth, the fact that he broke the mold of the European austere image gave a great start in terms of broadening the reach of the orchestra.''
Ozawa could be direct and dictatorial, as when he reorganized the Tanglewood Music Center. He could be difficult to pin down, splitting his time among three continents because of touring responsibilities in Europe and his family in Japan. But he was willing to listen to new ideas, according to Middlesex Superior Court Judge Julian T. Houston, a trustee who pushed the BSO to pay more attention to Boston's black community.
For Houston, the need was obvious. In the early '80s, he brought his son to Symphony Hall for an educational concert. Looking around the room, Houston noticed only a handful of minority children there, along with many empty seats. Working with the BSO administration, Houston helped to develop a program to bring children from Dorchester and Roxbury into Symphony Hall.
He also suggested to the orchestra's management a tribute to African-American singer Roland Hayes. One day, Houston was told Ozawa wanted to discuss the idea with him. They talked and, at the end, Ozawa nodded his head and said, ''Okay, let's do it.'' For the tribute, the BSO commissioned ''Lilacs'' from composer George Walker, who became the first African- American to win the Pulitzer Prize in music.
''You have to have the right message and you have to understand what he's looking for,'' says Houston. ''You can't propose a program for political reasons and ideological reasons. It has to be a program that is artistically defensible and this one was.''
But not all symphony watchers have been pleased with the Ozawa tenure.
Judith Tick, a music professor at Northeastern University, decided not to renew her subscription because she thought the programming during the Ozawa tenure too conservative. She also felt that Ozawa, and the orchestra's management, failed to connect with much of Boston.
''It doesn't really exploit its potential for leadership in the city,'' says Tick. ''It doesn't have enough outreach toward colleges and university programs of music. I also don't see many links between the programming at the BSO and the Museum of Fine Arts. It acts as an island when in fact it's on the mainland.''
Though he was responsible for leading the symphony, Ozawa did not always drive its offstage programming. That often fell to the administration, which oversees not only the BSO but the Boston Pops and Tanglewood. Ozawa's role, as an administrator, was strained by his busy schedule.
''Frankly, you can't do it all,'' says BSO's General Manager Mark Volpe. ''And what happened is that in terms of our outreach and education, we built the infrastructure and Seiji was a godparent.''
A godparent, but also a superstar, says Volpe. In the age of the jet-setting conductor, his high profile helped keep the BSO on the map internationally.
''Did I wish he was here more?'' says Tom Morris, BSO General Manager from 1978 to 1985. ''In a funny way, if somebody's doing a good job, no matter how much time they're giving you, you always want more. The danger is if anybody thinks that's enough.''