Zubin Mehta, who was born in 1936 in Bombay, the son of violinist and conductor Mehli Mehta, completed his studies in Vienna, where he concentrated on conducting (with Hans Swarowsky), double bass, percussion, and composition. In 1958 he won the Liverpool International Conducting Competition, and in 1962 he was appointed Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, a position he held until 1978. Meh-ta’s partnership with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, which began in 1961, is especially legendary: the IPO named him Music Advisor in 1969 and, in 1977, Music Director, a title which was later confirmed for life. During the Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War he gave concerts for soldiers at the front. Mehta has also held leadership positions with the New York Philharmonic (1978–91), the Maggio Musicale in Florence (since 1985), and the Bavarian Staatsoper in Munich (1998–2006), among others. As an opera conductor Mehta has also performed at the Salzburg Festival, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, La Scala in Milan, the Vienna Staatsoper, and Covent Garden in London. He has been awarded the Nikisch Ring (the Vienna Philharmonic Ring of Honor) and is an honorary member of Vienna’s Society of Friends of Music and of the Vienna Philharmonic, whose New Year’s concerts he has conducted four times. Mehta’s musical work extends to the political-humanitarian sphere as well, including, for example, the first joint concert by the New York Philharmonic and the Soviet State Symphony Orchestra in 1988 and a similar project between the Berlin Philharmonic and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in 1990. Zubin Mehta is an honorary citizen of Florence and Tel Aviv; in October 2008 he received Japan’s Praemium Imperiale. In 2006 he published his autobiography, The Score of My Life.
LUCERNE FESTIVAL (IMF) debut on 4 September 1964 with the Vienna Philharmonic in works by Gottfried von Einem, Franz Liszt, and Johannes Brahms.
August 2011