Saito Kinen Orchestra

Jan. 3, Seiji Ozawa conducting in Tokyo Bunka Kaikan -- Symphony No. 2 in C Minor "Resurrection" (Gustav Mahler, 1860-1911) with Emiko Suga, Nathalie Stutzmann and the Shinyukai Chorus

Seiji Ozawa conducted the Saito Kinen Orchestra in a special performance of Gustav Mahler's Resurrection Symphony in Tokyo Bunka Kaikan last month. It was one of five performances in Tokyo and Matsumoto, the orchestra's remote rehearsal base, celebrating the end of 1999 and the beginning of the last year of the millennium.

Eighty minutes in performance time, calling on a large chorus and a pair of soloists in addition to the large orchestra, the "Resurrection" symphony is considered to be one of the final statements in the symphony orchestra repertoire.

If the Beethoven Ninth makes a fitting declaration for the end of the year, Ozawa obviously regards the Mahler Second as a fitting declaration for the end of the millennium.

In this symphony, Mahler extended the limits of composition to tackle the religious conundrum of life after death. He scattered instrumental ensembles at an unseen distance, extending the spatial dimension of the music. He was, more than any other before or since, a conductor and a composer. He was at one and the same time the last of the romantics and the forger of modernism. He was, in Norman Lebrecht's words, a central Viennese figure and the most un-Austrian of musicians.

These larger-than-life concepts appeal mightily to Ozawa, a central Japanese figure and the most un-Oriental of musicians.

Even though he is acknowledged to be Japan's most gifted and famous artist, Ozawa has never really fitted into Japan's musical institutions. Members of the NHK Symphony Orchestra many years ago refused to perform under the young conductor when his untraditional cultural freedoms offended their conservative sensibilities.

This historical blot was painful and its memory is now embarrassing to all parties, but it happened.

Ozawa was born in Manchuria. As a teenager he was busy every weekend conducting student and amateur orchestras, and so acquired his craft and authority by dint of practical experience, not by seniority. He honed his skills and his art in Europe and America and won prizes and positions solely on the basis of his musical excellence, without regard for his race, nationality or any other nonmusical factor.

Now, Ozawa has been accorded the singular honor of the artistic directorship of the Vienna State Opera, a post once held by Gustav Mahler, from the year 2002. This is the most coveted operatic post in the world of music. It crowns Ozawa's long, long commitment to opera, which started almost invisibly with modest annual productions in Tokyo sponsored by a dealer of wines and spirits, with the New Japan Philharmonic in the pit.

Mahler may have been fiercely dedicated to composition, but he was forced by his duties on the podium to find time in the summer months for it. Ozawa may have been fiercely dedicated to opera, but (until 2002) he has been forced by his duties on the podium to find time in the off-months for it.

Through all of the years and all of the productions, he has steadfastly clung to a fundamental guiding principle, an affirmation of faith, offering performing opportunities to Japanese musicians who demonstrate themselves ready for them without sacrificing international artistic standards.

The construction of the New National Theater in Shibuya a few years ago brought Ozawa's name to the fore again in Japan. Once again the outcome was painful and embarrassing to the great maestro, but this too was destined to be. He would have been constitutionally unable to put aside a lifetime of artistic integrity to work with singers and instrumentalists chosen by a house policy of national, not artistic priorities.

Sixteen years ago, Ozawa and his colleague Kazuyoshi Akiyama, both students of the late Hideo Saito, assembled a special orchestra of the most talented musicians of Japan, at home and abroad: the Saito Kinen Orchestra. Every year when the SKO is reassembled, there are faces in the orchestra which remind us how Ozawa maintains the scales of national incentive and artistic excellence in equilibrium. This year's SKO roster of 110 musicians includes a double handful whose Japanese status is as sincere as it is honorary: internationally renowned players such as contrabassist Rainer Zepperitz, clarinetist Karl Leister, horn player Radek Baborak and timpanist Everett Firth.

The Saito Kinen Orchestra is a miracle. Consider the way the musicians were drawn together from around the world and briefly rehearsed to form this year's SKO. It was shot through with marvelous solo playing, meticulous rhythms, splendid ensemble, beautifully judged dynamics and judicious layering. In a mark of ever higher standards, the tonal coloring was often quite wonderful.

Under Ozawa's baton, everything was carefully worked out, perfectly judged and absolutely concentrated. What great calculation, and what immaculate execution!

Ozawa's heart is Japanese, his brain international, his soul that of a poet. Others too have these qualities. No one else, though, has his unique vision, and the capacity it has given him to inspire others to follow him into uncharted waters.

Where is there another orchestra like the Saito Kinen Orchestra? Who turned "The Dialogue of the Carmelites" into the 1998 production of the year? Who personified the conducting technique as a marriage of musical ballet and martial arts? Who thought to produce "The Damnation of Faust" as an opera? Whose idea was it to organize an ongaku-juku orchestra and chorus of international standards, Ozawa's next visionary project for Japan?

Perhaps, though, it is only history repeating itself. A century ago, Gustav Mahler transformed the opera house and all of orchestra music with his own uncompromising artistic standards and lofty vision, and he too was misunderstood in his country in his time.

Whatever the case, Ozawa has a clear affinity for Mahler's extended musical structures and passionate, tortured emotions. Next yearend, I expect him to open the next millennium with more of the music of Mahler.