Murakami being one of the greatest novelists of our era and Ozawa on the other hand, is one of the greatest conductors of our time.
They are both from Japan and apparently close friends.
Most probably you know Murakami from his fiction novels such as "Norwegian Wood", "The Wind-up Bird Chronicle", "Kafka On the Shore" and more recently "IQ84" and "Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage". He also has a big passion about music, especially jazz and classical. Before he started writing, he ran a jazz cafe in Tokyo called "Peter Cat". I remember reading an interview with him where he was saying that he had decided to become a writer because he was not able to play a musical instrument therefore being a musician was not possible for him...Here I have to add that there are also some good non-fiction books of Murakami, one about running (he is also a keen marathon runner by the way) and one about the sarin gas attacks in the Tokyo underground.
Seiji Ozawa, Murakami's collaborator in the book, is a renowned conductor mainly associated with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He spent 29 years as the musical director of the orchestra and also conducted the San Francisco, Toronto Symphonies along with Vienna State Opera. He started his music career as a pianist but after breaking his finger he shifted his focus from piano to conducting. He was quite successful even at his younger ages that brought him scholarships to work with Herbert von Karajan in Berlin and Leonard Bernstein in New York. He is 82 years old and has been struggling with cancer for the last 7 years.
Ozawa on the left, with Murakami
The book is based on a series of six main conversations dated between November 2010 and July 2011 along with some shorter discussions/exchanges of ideas again on music scattered in-between.
The main conversations shape around some classical works of high importance such as Brahms' Piano Concerto No.1, Beethoven's 3rd Piano Concerto and Mahler's Symphony No.1.
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| Cover of the Book (English translation by Jay Rubin) |
To be able to follow the conversations, it might be a good idea to keep the pieces handy as in many parts of the book they refer to the music they are discussing about.
That's why I am sharing a Spotify playlist that has been created based on the book. You just need to show the below code to your smart phones with the app installed.
They touch a variety of musical issues through their discussions on the compositions and different performances. I can share one issue that was quite interesting for me. In the first conversation where they discuss about Brahms' Piano Concerto No.1 (Bernstein conducting, Gould playing the piano), they bring up the topic of "who is the boss in a concerto performance, is it the conductor or the soloist?".
Here is a video clip from that specific concert where Bernstein made an historical pre-concert speech. Maybe you can decide who the real boss is...
Overall the book can be a good read for music, especially classic music enthusiasts. In my opinion, the book could be a little bit better by enriching the contribution from Ozawa's experiences rather than giving many details about his career where you can find elsewhere. Murakami makes a statement somewhere in the book arguing that the real success of a good writer depends on his/her rhythm. I have to confess that I could not find this rhythm in this book as opposed to his many great novels. If you read the book you can get a sensation that the two maestros have enjoyed their time and conversations together (well maybe Murakami a bit more), but will the readers enjoy as much as they did, I doubt it..
Let's finish with some good music.
"Kafka on the Shore", music by Eunbi Kim, words by Murakami
"Radetzky March", by Strauss, Ozawa conducting the Vienna Philharmonic
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