I have never considered myself an expert on conducting. When it comes to assessing a conductor, I defer to those who are, or have been, conductors and actually done the job, or those experts sitting up in the seats at an opera house studying the score as the performance takes place.

I can only discuss who genuinely moved me as a concert goer. I first experienced the magic of Seiji Ozawa in 1972 when I was 12 years old. My mother took me to the Salzburg Festival, and one of the performances we attended was Ozawa conducting Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 3 with the Dresden Symphony. I do not recall how he conducted the piece, but I do have a clear, even visceral recollection of him on the podium, his long wavy hair swaying as he conducted. He was like a rock star.

It would be many years before I saw him again. In 1992, I experienced his conducting of Pique Dame in Vienna. He served as principal conductor and music director of the Vienna State Opera from 2002 to 2010. This is one of the performances with the same starry cast I saw.

Those who have attended the Vienna State Opera regularly or seen Ozawa elsewhere, including Tanglewood and Boston, can provide a critical assessment of his opera conducting. Ozawa conducted only three operas during his career at the Metropolitan Opera in New York: Eugene Onegin in 1992, Oedipus Rex in 1994, The Queen of Spades in 2008. I saw the conductor perform Pique Dame again in 2008.

Seiji Ozawa passed away in 2024 at the age of 88.