Holst – The planets

Discogs

This is the second edition I own of this recording. In the first I wrote about the work itself, now I can shed some light on its conductor. Seji Ozawa was maybe Japan’s foremost conductor. In the later half of his career he was active in Japan itself, by establishing the Saito Kinen Orchestra. When he was making this recording however, he was mainly active in America, at the head of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Under his guidance the orchestra became one of the big orchestras in the US. The artistic direction they took was different from its European counterparts. There was more attention for more recent work, including Ligeti and Takemitsu.

When he was diagnosed with cancer in 2011 he worked with writer Haruki Murakami on a book with six interviews about the nature of music. The resulting Absolutely on music is highly recommended.

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