Imagine it’s 1985 and you are sitting in a master class with Seijii Ozawa at Tanglewood. You have a front row seat as you watch a young conductor, nervous and unsure, as he tries conducting part of the Second Movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6:
I’m not telling you how to conduct the Beethoven… I don’t teach you how to conduct the Beethoven. What is Beethoven? You [already] know… I am telling you HOW to tell [the] orchestra what you want.
This is what you hear in the first 10 minutes from Maestro Ozawa in an intimate 1985 documentary by David and Albert Maysles simply titled “Ozawa”. As a young conductor, this opening scene gave me hope as I struggled to find my own conducting style. To this day, I’m still learning to be a maestro (hence the name mystro2b…) but Ozawa makes it clear to his students that he is not telling them to do it exactly like he does, but rather:
1) Know your music.
2) Know what you want.
3) Know HOW to tell the ensemble what you want.
Easier said than done. And later, we see Ozawa himself reflecting on his teaching conducting to these students:
conducting is very strange you know. We say ‘conducting technique’ but nobody knows really…and all afternoon [when] I was conducting,[I] never said a word about ‘technique’…But yet when I teach I have to say ‘this must be that’ (gesturing) It’s almost impossible. But I guess musical technique is when you feel something…this should come naturally to the music…then the question becomes what kind of life you have, what kind of person you are.
The extreme close-ups and unconventional camera angles make this a very personal experience as you spend time with Ozawa back stage, on stage, and in very private conversations about his remarkable career as the first Japanese conductor to achieve prominence in the Western world. This mixed in with priceless black and white footage of him conducting at Tanglewood as a young man is historical footage worth watching.
After watching this in college, I purchased a copy of it at a library book sale, then lost it during a move. Nearly 25 years later, I found the VHS and recently re-lived rare performances and rehearsals featuring Rudolf Serkin, Yo-Yo Ma, Jessye Norman, and Edith Weins. Musical excerpts include Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, Beethoven’s Piano Concerto #2, and Dvorak’s Cello Concerto in B Minor.
If you are a great maestro, or student of conducting, you will absolutely love this 57 minute masterpiece about an often misunderstood conductor who, sadly, just recently announced he will under go treatments for esophageal cancer, cancelling any engagements for at least six months.
I am hoping this documentary will be released on DVD. I’m pretty certain you can only find this on VHS and it’s probably not on the shelf of your local video store. There may be a digital version available somewhere by a maestro-to-be…or mystro2b. Send me a private message and I’ll see if I can link you to a digital archive.
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