There is something wholesomely endearing about Zubin Mehta. If you had a favourite uncle you’d want him to look like him. He has the demeanour of a well-travelled person, full of bon-homie and joie-de-vivre, with perhaps a touch of the imp about him. A mate.
As if that is not enough Mehta also loves cricket. In fact when he initially agreed to conduct the Australian World Orchestra in December 2013 he did so on the understanding that he would spend what was left of his non-musical activities watching the Ashes series. As it turned out, his best plans were spoilt by the decision of Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències in Valencia, Spain to schedule the first of the Wagner Ring Cycles simultaneously; but as he tells Luke Slattery of The Australian “the economic situation in Spain meant we couldn’t do the whole Ring so I could have come in December after all.”
The AWO concerts in both Melbourne and Sydney were re-scheduled to October of the same year and Mehta made up for his Ashes disappointment by surrounding himself with cricketers Brett Lee, Steve Waugh, the late Richie Benaud and Ian Chappell, amongst others. At the concerts, Mehta conducted Mahler’s First Symphony and Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, both to great acclaim as you can hear from the CD produced in association with the ABC (ABC 481 0847).
He also conducted the AWO at the Edinburgh International Festival and the BBC Proms 2022.
Mehta’s musical career begins in 1954 when, as a teen-ager, he decides to forsake his medical studies in Bombay (now Mumbai) in favour of studying with Hungarian-born conductor Hans Swarowsky in Vienna. Two of his colleagues at the ‘school’ turn out to be the late Claudio Abbado and Daniel Barenboim.
Within four years Mehta has made his conducting debut with the Vienna Philharmonic and also win The Liverpool International Conducting Competition. He is barely 22. He becomes the assistant at the Liverpool Philharmonic before becoming chief conductor. In 1960 he is made Musical Director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra (I personally saw him perform there in the late 60s) a post he holds until 1967.
At the same time he is made assistant to Georg Solti at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, a post he holds briefly because Solti, his superior at the time, resigns in a huff for not being consulted of Mehta’s appointment. In 1962, at the age of 34, Mehta takes over the mantle of Music Director, the youngest music director ever for a major North American orchestra. Kurt Reher, a cellist at the time in the Los Angeles Orchestra recalls that “within two beats we were entranced. It seemed this young man had the ability, the musical knowledge of a man of 50 or 55.”
He holds the post till 1978. In recognition of his endeavours at Los Angeles he is awarded his own ‘star’ on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2011.
Mehta has a history of staying at Musical Director posts for long periods of time – a rarity in his profession. His next tenure at the New York Philharmonic lasts from 1978 to 1991.
After Mehta’s first concert, critic Winthorp Sargeant was enthralled. He wrote: “[Mehta] has the capacity to control every sound made by an orchestra, and he does this with the simplest of gestures, every one of which has an immediate and perceptible effect. He has a talent for conveying a mood of serenity, or of serene grandeur, to both orchestra and audiences that is rare indeed among the younger generation of conductors”
Meanwhile Mehta continues his rapport with the Israel Philharmonic which he joined in 1969 as a Music Advisor, becoming Music Director in 1977 and in 1981 is made Music Director for Life.
From 1985 till 1917 he is the chief conductor of the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentina. From 1998 till 2006 he is Music Director of the Bavarian State Opera while the Munich Philharmonic bestows on him an Honorary Conductorship. Lorin Maazel shared the main conductor duties at the new opera house in Valencia with Mehta until the untimely death of Maazel.
But the ‘main event’ of Mehta’s professional career is conducting the FIFA world-cup three tenors concert held at the Caracalla Baths in Rome on July 7, 1990. Who can forget the sumptuousness of the venue and the spectacular singing that Pavarotti, Carreras and Domingo produced.
This caught the imagination of the world like no other musical event ever did. Even the subsequent three tenors concert (one in Melbourne) never captured the magic of that first one. At the time of the original concert, I remember walking into the Bangkok airport transit lounge (our flight from England to Sydney had been delayed due to mechanical problems) and being transfixed by what I saw and heard on the television screen. The VHS video of the event becomes a best-seller and the whole cycle is repeated when the digital version came out recently on DVD.
On a personal note, Mehta’s first marriage was to Canadian soprano Carmen Lasky in 1958. They have a son, Mervon (who, since April 2000 is the Executive Director of Performing Arts for The Royal Conservatory in Toronto), and a daughter, Zarina. In 1964 they divorced. In July 1969, Mehta married Nancy Kovack, an American former film and television actress. A permanent resident of the United States, Mehta retains his Indian citizenship.
According to Wikipedia, his second daughter Alexandra was born in Los Angeles in 1967, the result of an affair Mehta had between his two marriages. His son Ori was born in the 1990s as the result of an extra-marital affair in Israel during Mehta’s second marriage.
For years Mehta and his good chum, Daniel Barenboim have been trying, without success, to convince the Israeli authorities to allow operatic performances of Wagner’s works in the country. In addition Barenboim, with his West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, is trying to breach the divide between the Arab-Israeli culture. But Mehta, himself has not been backwards in that regard.
Mehta spends at least three months of the year in Israel where all 105 members of the Israel Philharmonic are hand-picked. So far no Israeli Arabs have been part of the mix but Mehta is hopeful that in years to come their talent will surface. “We have an Arab training programme in the town of Nazareth,” he is quoted as saying. “They are not ready to join the orchestra but that is my dream.”
In September 2022 and in recognition of Mehta’s eminent service to the Australia-India bilateral relationship Governor General David Hurley bestowed on him the Honorary Companion of the Order of Australia.
Randolph Magri-Overend
