TOKYO, Feb 9, 2024 (BSS/AFP) - Celebrated Japanese conductor Seiji Ozawa,

who led world-renowned orchestras, died at his home in Tokyo aged 88, his
management announced on Friday.

"Conductor Seiji Ozawa passed away peacefully at his home on February 6th,
2024, at the age of 88," his management said in a statement on its official
Facebook page.

He died of heart failure and the funeral was attended by close relatives
according to his wishes, the statement read.

Ozawa was born in 1935 in the Chinese province of Manchuria, then a Japanese
colony, and started learning piano at elementary school.

But he broke two fingers as a teenager while playing rugby -- another passion
-- and switched to conducting.

He moved abroad in 1959 and met some of the greatest luminaries of the
classical music world, including the composer and conductor Leonard
Bernstein, becoming his assistant at the New York Philharmonic in the 1961-
1962 season.

Ozawa went on to lead orchestras in Chicago, Toronto and San Francisco. He
also had a 29-year stint as musical director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra
(BS0), where a concert hall was named after him.

He left in 2002 to become chief conductor at the Vienna State Opera until
2010.

The Vienna Philharmonic, with which Ozawa first collaborated at the 1966
Salzburg Festival, paid tribute to his "loving interaction with his
colleagues and his charisma".

"It was a gift to be able to go a long way with this artist, who was
characterised by the highest musical standards and at the same time humility
towards the treasures of musical culture," professor Daniel Froschauer,
chairman of the Vienna Philharmonic, said in a statement.

Paying tribute to "one of his generation's most sought-after and celebrated
conductors", Chad Smith, the chief executive officer of the BSO, said Ozawa
was "a force of nature on and off stage".

He was "a musical genius who combined a balletic grace at the podium with a
prodigious memory".

"Seiji was all these things and much more to his fans around the world," said
Smith of the BSO's longest-serving conductor.