Seiji Ozawa trained his whole childhood to be a concert pianist until a teenage rugby game in 1950 broke two of his fingers and ended that dream in an instant. This episode traces how his teacher Hideo Saito took him to hear Beethoven's Fifth Piano Concerto, where the injured student stopped watching the keyboard and started watching the conductor. From there, Ozawa hustled his way to Europe with scooter-company sponsorship, won the Besancon conducting competition in 1959, and was mentored by both Herbert von Karajan in Berlin and Leonard Bernstein in New York.

We follow the NHK Symphony boycott that greeted his democratic rehearsal style back in Tokyo, the white turtleneck that replaced the tuxedo in San Francisco, and his record 29-year tenure at the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The conversation also covers his concerts for peace in Hiroshi ...