Japanese conductor Kazuki Yamada makes his CSO podium debut

When famed Japanese conductor Seiji Ozawa died in February at 88, Kuzuki Yamada took the loss particularly hard. The younger conductor, who is also Japanese, had long looked up to the elder maestro, who is best known for his 29 years as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra starting in 1973.

The two share several ties, starting with the Besançon (France) International Competition for Young Conductors, which Yamada won in 2009. Exactly a half-century earlier, Ozawa took first place in the same contest. “He gave me a lot of advice after I won the competition,” Yamada said. “He was super kind.”

With Ozawa’s recommendation, Yamada twice conducted Japan’s Saito Kinen Orchestra, which Ozawa co-founded in 1984. And, last summer, he made his debut at the Tanglewood Music Festival in Lenox, Massachusetts, which, as the summer home of the Boston Symphony, had close ties to Ozawa. “It was an emotional time for me,” he said.

Following in the footsteps of Ozawa, who first conducted the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1963 at the Ravinia Festival (where he became music director a year later), Yamada will make his debut with the ensemble during a set of concerts at Symphony Center May 16-18 and May 21.

He can’t believe he will actually be leading the ensemble he so admired as a youngster, buying many CSO CDs. “It’s kind of the dream come true for me,” he said. “It’s such a great orchestra with such a history. Now, I will be on the podium with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. It will be very, very exciting. Wow.”

“It’s kind of the dream come true for me. It’s such a great orchestra with such a history. Now, I will be on the podium with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. It will be very, very exciting.”

Yamada’s CSO program will open with the orchestra’s first performances of How Slow the Wind, one of many works about nature by Japanese composer Tōru Takemitsu (1930–1996). “It’s a short piece,” Yamada said, “but it’s great music. In this opportunity, I wanted to introduce Japanese music to the Chicago audience. It’s not so long, and it’s a very comfortable piece for listening.”

Next up will be Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with Martin Helmchen, the 2001 winner of the Clara Haskil International Piano Competition and a regular CSO soloist. Yamada is a fan of the German pianist. “It will be very exciting with him,” the conductor said.

Rounding out the line-up will be César Franck’s Symphony in D minor, the French composer’s best-known symphonic work (Franck is technically Belgian as a native of Liège, but he made his career in Paris). It once had a firm place in the standard repertory but has been much less frequently performed in recent decades. “I am a lover of French music,” Yamada said, “and this Franck is a monumental piece of French music.”

The 45-year-old conductor’s career got a big boost with his aforementioned win at the weeklong Besançon Competition. Until that point, he had only conducted in Japan. It was challenging to come to Europe for the first time to compete in such a high-pressure environment. “Everyday I could feel myself growing up,” he said. “At that time, my English was completely bad, but even in this one week, day by day I was improving. It was an unforgettable week.”

As a result of his victory, he guest conducted the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande in Geneva in 2010, and two years later, he became the ensemble’s principal guest conductor, a post he held through 2017. “We started a great collaboration [those] six years, and we made a lot of CDs — some great moments with them,” he said.

In 2013, he added the title of principal guest conductor of the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra and was promoted to principal conductor and artistic director in 2016. In June 2023, his contract was extended through 2026.

But his most prominent post so far came in April 2023, when he assumed the title of chief conductor and artistic adviser of the City of Birmingham Orchestra after serving as its principal guest conductor. The English ensemble gained international attention under the 1980–98 leadership of Simon Rattle, now one of the world’s most acclaimed conductors. “The relationship between the orchestra and me is so incredibly great, if I may say so. It’s all going so well,” he said.

At the same time, though, he acknowledged that the orchestra is facing unprecedented financial challenges. In February, the Birmingham City Council announced that it would cease all funding to the ensemble by 2025, as part of cutbacks affecting a range of cultural organizations and forcing the closure of 25 of 36 libraries. But he is nonetheless optimistic about the future.

“We have to do something to create the new,” Yamada said. “The classical music scene can be very conservative, but we want to open new doors. The CBSO has had this kind of DNA always from the Simon Rattle era.”

“We have to do something to create the new,” Yamada said. “The classical music scene can be very conservative, but we want to open new doors. The CBSO has had this kind of DNA always from the Simon Rattle era.”

Yamada led the City of Birmingham Orchestra on a Japanese tour in 2023, and he will lead the ensemble for the third consecutive year at the BBC Proms, a high-profile summer festival that takes place in London’s Royal Albert Hall.

In recent years, Yamada has created a bridge between his two orchestras by bringing the CBSO Chorus to the European mainland to join the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra in works like Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. He hopes to take the exchange even further with some kind of a joint orchestral appearance. “It’s one of my dreams,” he said.

It turns out, he said, that the two orchestras actually have a long connection. Louis Frémaux, who served as principal conductor of the CBSO from 1969 to 1978 after previously heading the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic. “I’m following in the same way,” Yamada said.

Though he still returns to Japan to lead the Japan Philharmonic and Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, he has scaled back his activities there. He wants to focus primarily on Europe and the United States and particularly his two present posts.

It is clear from his Yamada’s debut this season with the CSO and his first concerts in June 2025 with the Berlin Philharmonic that the conductor has larger ambitions, but he declined to discuss what those might be. “For the moment, I’m loving working with both the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic and City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Of course, nobody knows what the future holds, but one day, of course . . .” he said, deliberately leaving the sentence unfinished.