Hideo Saito

Hideo Saito was a Japanese cellist, conductor and music educator born in Tokyo in 1902, where he died in 1974. He is significant as one of the first professional cellists in Japan to devote himself to chamber music, and for training a generation of performers who would shape the country's musical life.

His initial interest was the piano, and by the age of fourteen he was already conducting a small mandolin orchestra. In 1920 he entered Jochi University, where he met Prince Hidemaro Konoe, a professor and conductor who took him with him to Germany. He studied with Klengel at the Leipzig Conservatory from 1923 to 1927. On his return he joined the New Symphony Orchestra, today the NHK Symphony, and began teaching. He went back to Germany in 1930 to train with Feuermann at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik until 1932, and on his return he became principal cello soloist of the New Symphony. It was also around this time that he began to take up conducting.

In 1948 he founded the Tōhō School of Music, which later became a university. His students included Seiji Ozawa, Nobuko Imai and Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi. With the Tōhō Chamber Orchestra he toured the USSR and the United States. In 1973 he served on the jury of the Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibaud Competition and that same year received the San Ford Prize from Yale University.