Eiji Oue is a prominent Japanese conductor, born on October 3, 1956, in Hiroshima. He began his conducting studies at the Toho Gakuen School of Music under the renowned Hideo Saito. In 1978, at the invitation of Seiji Ozawa, he attended the Tanglewood Music Center, where he studied with Leonard Bernstein, who became an important mentor and strongly influenced his conducting style and career. Oue won the Tanglewood Koussevitzky Prize in 1980 and also studied with Bernstein as a conducting fellow at the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute.
Oue was music director of the Greater Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras from 1982 to 1989. His professional career in the United States continued with his appointment as music director of the Erie Philharmonic, serving from 1990 to 1995, alongside work as associate conductor of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. From 1995 to 2002, he was music director of the Minnesota Orchestra, succeeding Edo de Waart. During this period, he led the orchestra on its first tours of Europe and Japan and made several recordings with the ensemble, chiefly for Reference Recordings. He was also music director of Wyoming's Grand Teton Music Festival from 1997 to 2003.
Following a 1997 tour with the NDR Radiophilharmonie in Hannover, Oue was appointed its principal conductor in September 1998 and led the orchestra until 2009, cultivating a broad repertoire that included light classical music. In 2003, he became principal conductor of the Osaka Philharmonic Orchestra. He made a historic Bayreuth Festival debut in 2005, conducting Wagner's Tristan und Isolde and becoming the first Japanese conductor to lead an opera at the festival. In September 2006, he became music director of the Barcelona Symphony and Catalonia National Orchestra, a position he held until 2010.
Since 2000, Oue has been professor of conducting at the Hannover University of Music, Drama and Media. His musical interests lean heavily toward 20th-century compositions. His extensive discography includes works by George Antheil, Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Gustav Mahler, Bohuslav Martinů, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Ottorino Respighi, Alfred Schnittke, Igor Stravinsky, Richard Strauss and Dominick Argento, as well as the complete symphonies of Dmitry Kabalevsky. His commercial recordings also include Niccolò Paganini's Violin Concerto No. 1 and Louis Spohr's Violin Concerto No. 8 with Hilary Hahn and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. In 2006, he received the Osaka Culture Prize Special Arts Prize.