By JAMES R. OESTREICH

MATSUMOTO, Japan - The conductor Seiji Ozawa has characteristically exuded energy and a positive spirit, both onstage and in personal contact. And despite having undergone surgery for esophageal cancer, he did so again in a recent interview. Looking worn and sounding gravelly as he sat in the main performance hall of the Saito Kinen Festival, which he directs, Mr. Ozawa, 75, told a harrowing tale. “I kind of was threatened for life,” said Mr. Ozawa, whose English remains idiosyncratic despite some four decades spent largely in the United States and Canada.

Already suffering from sciatica, he learned at the end of last year that he had cancer; in January his esophagus, he says, was essentially removed. “Fantastic thing,” he said. “They pulled the stomach up -can you imagine? - and put it together here,” he added, pointing toward his collarbone, then showing a scar across his throat. He has recovered, though he said he lost some 13.5 kilograms, leaving him decidedly thin. He has since gained back “1 kilo and 700 grams,” he reported .

More important, having completed chemotherapy, he was declared cancer- free in June, but the sciatica makes walking, or conducting, painful. He has canceled all his engagements for the year except two. One was the Saito Kinen Festival in August, which he largely founded in 1992 .

The other is Carnegie Hall’s festival JapanNYC in New York, of which he is artistic director. He will conduct the Saito Kinen Orchestra there in December. Next year he will confine his conducting mostly to Japan.


Stricken by cancer,
Ozawa was saved
by music.


Mr. Ozawa, who was music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra for 29 years, from 1973 to 2002, said he looks forward to re-establishing a presence in America, however temporary. He holds dual citizenship in Japan and the United States but acknowledged that he again has to call Japan home, and the Japanese - to judge from the posters, the acclaim and the mood in this city ? embrace him.

When he conducted the Saito Kinen Orchestra in private concerts in early August, Mr. Ozawa told The Japan Times, “I consider today, the first day I conducted before an audience after my convalescence, as the first date of my second life.” He added, “I hope my music has acquired more depth.

” Whether it has will probably come only through music, his most natural medium. Language difficulties aside, Mr. Ozawa has always tended to discount the value of speech. “My one rule,” he has said of conducting, “is to avoid words.” In their place, he has developed a most eloquent language of full-body communication .

When asked about any new meanings or morals he may have drawn from his illness, he responded in vague generalities. “I felt that I was very happy that I became a musician,” he said. “Music was so important. And then I had so much time, and I couldn’t do anything else, and music became more and more important.” He said he had derived the most satisfaction from immersing himself in Benjamin Britten’s “War Requiem,” which festival forces will take to Carnegie Hall .

He restudied the score a couple of hours a day for about two weeks and rehearsed the choruses and chamber orchestra that will take part, as well as the vocal soloists. “Maybe the piece was a little too heavy, but I felt so happy to study and have time,” he said. “Music is wonderful to me. It really saved my life.”