Zubin Mehta was born on April 29, 1936 in Bombay, India. While Mehta was still in his teens, his teacher, the venerable Hans Swarowsky, called him "a born conductor." Years later in 1981, the year Mehta was named Music Director for Life of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Harold C. Schonberg wrote in The New York Times that "his beat must be an orchestra player's delight. It is almost text book in its motions, moving in fairly large arcs in an unfussy manner…. There is something Toscaninian in Mr. Mehta's beat." And yet there always has been something more than the control of even the great Toscanini in Mehta's conducting. Mehta's passion on the podium is all his own. His musical integrity is legend, and his love of freedom is as great as his love of music.
"It is not politics," says Mehta, "It is humanity. I don't campaign for anybody." He makes music for everybody. He often carries it where it is most needed: from the ruins of the Bosnian National Library in war-torn Sarajevo to Tel Aviv during the Gulf War, in Moscow's Gorky Park during the twilight of the Soviet era and in India with his Israeli musicians breaking a decades-long absence of cultural dialogue and diplomatic ties. In 1999, Mehta's passion brought together, for the first time, the Israel Philharmonic and the Bavarian State Opera Orchestra for a historic performance of Mahler's Resurrection Symphony No. 2 in what had been a concentration camp in Weimar. Mehta has spread the sheer sensual joy of great music coast to coast in America at the helm of the New York Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, at festival time in Florence, and through season after season in his home theater in Munich. Mehta led the Three Tenors Concerts in Rome and Los Angeles. Together with his friends and fellow soccer fans José Carreras, Plácido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti, he created the most wildly sensational classical music success story of our time. Always a showman but also indefatigably a servant of the score, Mehta has a rich and growing discography that attests to the breadth of his musical genius.
While Mehta, who is Parsee by heritage and Indian by birth, currently resides in Los Angeles, he was born in Bombay, now called Mumbai. He grew up in a time of national strife: the time of India's hard-won independence but also the painful partition and birth of Pakistan and Gandhi's assassination and its aftermath. He received his early musical education from his father, Mehli Mehta, a violinist and co-founder of the Bombay Symphony Orchestra and later the music director of the American Youth Symphony in Los Angeles.
"It is not politics," says Mehta, "It is humanity. I don't campaign for anybody." He makes music for everybody. He often carries it where it is most needed: from the ruins of the Bosnian National Library in war-torn Sarajevo to Tel Aviv during the Gulf War, in Moscow's Gorky Park during the twilight of the Soviet era and in India with his Israeli musicians breaking a decades-long absence of cultural dialogue and diplomatic ties. In 1999, Mehta's passion brought together, for the first time, the Israel Philharmonic and the Bavarian State Opera Orchestra for a historic performance of Mahler's Resurrection Symphony No. 2 in what had been a concentration camp in Weimar. Mehta has spread the sheer sensual joy of great music coast to coast in America at the helm of the New York Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, at festival time in Florence, and through season after season in his home theater in Munich. Mehta led the Three Tenors Concerts in Rome and Los Angeles. Together with his friends and fellow soccer fans José Carreras, Plácido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti, he created the most wildly sensational classical music success story of our time. Always a showman but also indefatigably a servant of the score, Mehta has a rich and growing discography that attests to the breadth of his musical genius.
While Mehta, who is Parsee by heritage and Indian by birth, currently resides in Los Angeles, he was born in Bombay, now called Mumbai. He grew up in a time of national strife: the time of India's hard-won independence but also the painful partition and birth of Pakistan and Gandhi's assassination and its aftermath. He received his early musical education from his father, Mehli Mehta, a violinist and co-founder of the Bombay Symphony Orchestra and later the music director of the American Youth Symphony in Los Angeles.
His younger brother, Zarin Mehta, is today the executive director of the New York Philharmonic. Neither Zarin nor Zubin set out originally for careers in music and young Zubin, in fact, began training in medicine. After only two semesters of medical school, Zubin Mehta launched into music in earnest, studying conducting with Swarowsky at the Music Academy in Vienna. Mehta won the Liverpool International Conducting Competition in 1958, and shortly afterwards he also won the Koussevitzky Competition in Tanglewood. By his mid-20s, Mehta already conducted both the Vienna Philharmonic and the Berlin Philharmonic.
PAGE: 1 | 2
