Dancing Around the Point
How can two music lovers have a book-length conversation about music that manages to evade the subject almost entirely? December 2016
Haruki Murakami is a prolific and distinguished novelist; Seiji Ozawa is an internationally renowned orchestral conductor. In December 2009, Ozawa was diagnosed with esophageal cancer and in the ensuing months, while receiving treatments, he underwent a back operation. During his difficult but successful recuperation and the modified return to professional commitments that followed, he and his friend Murakami hit on the idea of recording the frequent informal talks about music they had been…