Zubin Mehta
(born April 29, 1936) is an Indian conductor of Western classical music.
|
ZUBIN MEHTA TICKETS
EVENT | DATE | AVAILABILITY |
---|
Los Angeles Philharmonic: Zubin Mehta - Mozart Under The Stars Tickets 7/23 | Jul 23, 2024 Tue, 8:00 PM | | Los Angeles Philharmonic: Zubin Mehta - Brahms Tickets 12/6 | Dec 06, 2024 Fri, 11:00 AM | | Los Angeles Philharmonic: Zubin Mehta - Brahms Tickets 12/7 | Dec 07, 2024 Sat, 8:00 PM | | Los Angeles Philharmonic: Zubin Mehta - Brahms Tickets 12/8 | Dec 08, 2024 Sun, 2:00 PM | | Los Angeles Philharmonic: Zubin Mehta - Gurrelieder Tickets 12/13 | Dec 13, 2024 Fri, 8:00 PM | |
|
Early life
Zubin Mehta was born into a
Parsi family in
Bombay (now Mumbai),
India, the son of Mehli and Tehmina Mehta. His father
Mehli Mehta was a violinist and founding conductor of the
Bombay Symphony Orchestra.
Mehta is an alumnus of
St. Mary's (ISC) High School, Mazagoan, Mumbai and
St. Xavier's College, Mumbai. Zubin initially intended to study
medicine, but eventually became a music student in
Vienna at the age of 18, under the eminent instructor
Hans Swarowsky. Also at the same academy along with Zubin were conductor
Claudio Abbado and conductor–pianist
Daniel Barenboim.
Career
In
1958, Mehta made his conducting debut in
Vienna. The same year he won the International Conducting Competition in
Liverpool and was appointed assistant conductor of the
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.
Mehta soon rose to the rank of chief conductor when he was made Music Director of the
Montreal Symphony Orchestra in 1960, a post he held until 1967. In 1961, he was named assistant conductor of the
Los Angeles Philharmonic; however, the orchestra's music director designate,
Georg Solti, was not consulted on the appointment, and Solti subsequently resigned in protest
[1]; soon after, Mehta himself was named Music Director of the orchestra, and held the post from 1962 to 1978.
In 1978 Mehta became the Music Director and Principal Conductor of the
New York Philharmonic and remained there until his resignation in 1991, becoming the longest holder of the post.
The
Israel Philharmonic Orchestra appointed Mehta its Music Advisor in 1969, Music Director in 1977, and made him its Music Director for Life in 1981.
[2]
Since 1985, Mehta has been chief conductor of the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in
Florence. Additionally, from 1998 until 2006, Mehta was Music Director of the
Bavarian State Opera in
Munich. The
Munich Philharmonic Orchestra named him its Honorary Conductor. Since 2005, Mehta has been the main conductor (together with
Lorin Maazel) of the new
opera house of the
Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències in
Valencia.
Performances
Zubin Mehta received praise early in his career for dynamic interpretations of the large scale symphonic music of
Anton Bruckner,
Richard Strauss,
Gustav Mahler and
Franz Schmidt. He has also made a recording of
Indian instrumentalist,
Ravi Shankar's Sitar Concerto No. 2, with Shankar and the
London Philharmonic Orchestra. His conducting is also renowned as being flamboyant and forceful in performance.
Mehta has conducted the
Vienna New Year's Concert in the years 1990, 1995, 1998 and 2007.
As a double bassist, one of his most memorable performances was in a collaboration with
Itzhak Perlman,
Pinchas Zukerman,
Jacqueline du Pré and
Daniel Barenboim in a performance of
Schubert's Trout Quintet in the summer of 1969.
1990s
In 1990, he conducted the Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and the Orchestra del Teatro dell'Opera di Roma in the first ever
Three Tenors concert in
Rome, joining the tenors again in 1994 at the
Dodger Stadium,
Los Angeles. In June 1994, Mehta performed the
Mozart Requiem, along with the members of the
Sarajevo Symphony Orchestra and Chorus at the ruins of
Sarajevo's National Library, in a fund raising concert for the victims of armed conflict and remembrance of the thousands of people killed in the
Yugoslav wars. On August 29, 1999, he conducted Mahler
Symphony No. 2 (
Resurrection
), at the vicinity of
Buchenwald concentration camp in the
German city of
Weimar, with both the
Bavarian State Orchestra and the
Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, sitting alongside each other. He toured his native country
India and home city
Mumbai (
Bombay) in 1984, with the
New York Philharmonic Orchestra, and again in November-December 1994, with the
Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, along with soloists
Itzhak Perlman and
Gil Shaham. In 1997 and 1998, Mehta worked in collaboration with Chinese film director
Zhang Yimou on a production of the opera
Turandot
by
Giacomo Puccini which they took to
Florence, Italy and then to
Beijing, China where it was staged, in its actual surroundings, in the Forbidden City with over 300 extras and 300 soldiers. for eight historic performances. The making of this production was chronicled in a documentary called
The Turandot Project
which Mehta narrated.
2000s
In 2005 Mehta made his debut(!) with the
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. On 26 December 2005, the first anniversary of the
Indian Ocean Tsunami, Zubin Mehta along with the
Bavarian State Orchestra performed for the first time in
Chennai (formerly called Madras) at the world famous "
Madras Music Academy". This special
Tsunami memorial
concert was organised by the
Madras German consulate along with the Max-Mueller Bhavan/
Goethe institute. The team performed to a packed hall of select invitees. Nearly 3000 people turned up including eminent personalities such as
Amartya Sen (
Nobel Laureate in
economics) and the
Tamil Nadu governor,
Surjit Singh Barnala. He also performed in
Delhi on December 28 at the
Indira Gandhi Stadium. 2006 was his last year with the
Bavarian State Orchestra.
Honors and awards
In 1991, at the
Israel Prize ceremony in 1991, Mehta was awarded a special prize in recognition of his unique devotion to Israel and to the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.
In 1995, Laureate of the
Wolf Prize in Arts.
In 1999, Zubin Mehta was presented the "Lifetime Achievement Peace and Tolerance Award" of the
United Nations.
In 2001, the
Government of India honoured him with the
Padma Vibhushan, India's second highest civilian award.
In September, 2006 the
Kennedy Center announced Maestro Mehta as one of the receipients of that year's
Kennedy Center Honors. These were presented on December 2, 2006.
On February 3, 2007, Zubin Mehta was the recipient of the Second Annual Bridgebuilder Award at
Loyola Marymount University
Conductor
Karl Böhm awarded Mehta the Nikisch Ring — the Vienna Philharmonic Ring of Honor.
Mehta is an honorary citizen of both
Florence and
Tel Aviv and was made an honorary member of the
Vienna State Opera in 1997. In 2001 he was bestowed the title of “Honorary Conductor” of the
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and in 2004 the
Munich Philharmonic Orchestra awarded him the same title, as did the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in 2006. At the end of his tenure with the Bavarian State Opera he was named Honorary Conductor of the
Bavarian State Orchestra and Honorary Member of the Bavarian State Opera, and the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde Wien appointed him honorary member in November 2007.
Personal life
Mehta's first marriage was to Canadian soprano
Carmen Lasky from 1958 until 1964. They have one son (Mervon Mehta, b. 1960) and one daughter (Zarina, b. 1958). The divorce was amicable
[3]. "We grew apart. It just happened. I never did anything nasty to him, and he never did anything nasty to me," Carmen said in 1968.
Mehta married
Nancy Kovack, a former
American film and television actress, on 20 July 1969
[4].
Two years after divorcing Zubin,
Carmen Mehta married Zubin's brother
Zarin Mehta. Carmen and Zarin have daughter Rohanna (1967) and son Rustom (1968). In 2000 his brother,
Zarin Mehta, was appointed executive director of the
New York Philharmonic Orchestra.
Mehta's life has been documented in
Terry Sanders' film
Portrait of Zubin Mehta
and in a book by Martin Bookspan and Ross Yockey entitled
Zubin: The Zubin Mehta Story
. His autobiography, written with
Renate von Matuschka, is
Die Partitur meines Lebens
.
References in popular culture
The
Muppet, Zubin Beckmesser, is named after him. The second part of the name (Beckmesser) being a character from
Richard Wagner's opera,
The Mastersingers of Nuremberg.
The
Frank Zappa song
Billy the Mountain
includes a character of whom it is said "some folks say he looked like Zubin Mehta." This is a reference to a performance by the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1970, in the
UCLA basketball arena, of a series of Zappa's orchestral pieces. The performance was prefaced by a short speech from Zappa, who then turned to Mehta and said, "Hit it, Zubin! And anyways make it good!"