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Seiji Ozawa Bids Tanglewood Farewell
By David R. Zukerman, NYC and Winsted
 | | Seiji Ozawa conducts the Tanglewood audience and the BSO in singing Randall Thompson's "Alleluia" on July 14. |
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Seiji Ozawa conducted his last concerts as Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood on July 12-14. In a farewell message printed in that weekend’s program, Maestro Ozawa noted, in part: "Tanglewood is unique. Here nature and music come together in one place. There is a special peace, a special quiet here, that helps us realize how important music is in our world."
On July 12, when Maestro Ozawa conducted the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra in the Dvorak Cello Concerto with Mstislav Rostropovich on cello, and Brahms' Symphony No. 1, and again on July 14, when he conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Berlioz’ Symphonie fantastique and Beethoven’s Fantasia in C Minor, I stood to one side of the Tanglewood stage with other photographers and recorded images of these emotional concerts.
Maestro Ozawa leaves the Boston Symphony Orchestra after 29 years as its music director. The July 14 concert concluded with the Alleluia chorus that was written for Tanglewood in 1940 by Randall Thompson and is sung by incoming students each summer. Maestro Ozawa sang this chorus at Tanglewood as a student in 1960.
In a letter accompanying a reprint of Thompson’s "Alleluia" chorus, Maestro Ozawa, addressing "Dear Friends," wrote that this work, which has become a Tanglewood tradition, "will be sung by new generations of musicians who come here to make their own imprint, and collect their own memories of our beloved Tanglewood."
 | | Cellist Mstislav Rostropovich joined Maestro Ozawa and the young musicians of the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra on July 12. |
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His farewell message concluded that his years with the Boston Symphony have "not been job, or how do you say, a position for me. It’s been my life." He continued, "And, while I know so many of you, I also want to thank all of you whom I don’t know, who have supported me and this wonderful institution by coming to our concerts, by listening, by caring, and by making music a priority in your life, too."
The ovations given to Seiji Ozawa at Tanglewood on July 12-14 were the heartfelt thanks of Tanglewood-goers to a remarkable musician, a consummate conductor, a very special person who will never be spiritually distant from the BSO—or "our beloved Tanglewood."
 | | The Serge Koussevitsky Music Shed at Tanglewood, in harmony with the sylvan surroundings. |
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