Zubin Mehta

Zubin Mehta

Description

Zubin Mehta left the sheltered environs of his parental home in Bombay in 1954, as an eighteen year old, and moved to Vienna into the very unique culture of the Music Academy, where he studied under illustrious teachers such as Hans Swarowsky. Just seven years later, he conducted the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic Orchestras and became the director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra at the age of twenty-five. Further assignments included Los Angeles, New York, Florence , Tel Aviv, and eventually, Munich, where he worked as general music director of the Bavarian State Opera from 1998 to 2006. Zubin Mehta is one of the most celebrated conductors in the world. He has worked with all the top-class international orchestras and with excellent instrumentalists and opera stars of the past many decades. Musicians such as Daniel Barenboim, Claudio Abbado, Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman count among his intimate friends. Despite his tremendous success, this popular Indian with a zest for life still remains a restless spirit - a wanderer between the worlds, who is as famous for his commitment to Israel as for his musical openness to everything from open-air concerts to operas. His exciting life makes for a gripping autobiography.

Sujets

• Musique
• Histoire de la musique
• Lettres et linguistique
• Acacia farnesiana
• Hans Swarowski
• Zubin
• Biography
• Memoir
• Musician
• Mumbai
• Orchestra
• Autobiography
• Hans Swarowsky
• Music
• Opera
• Bombay

Informations

• Publié par: Roli Books
• Date de parution: 10 août 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9788174368959
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

ZUBIN MEHTA


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Lotus Collection

The title of the original German edition: Die Partitur meines Lebens
© 2006 Droemersche Verlagsanstalt
Th. Knaur Nachf. GmbH & Co. KG, München

© This English translation
Roli Books (P) Ltd., New Delhi, 2008

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the publisher.

This edition published in 2008
The Lotus Collection an imprint of
Roli Books Pvt. Ltd.
M-75, G.K. II Market, New Delhi 110 048
Phones: ++91 (011) 40682000, Fax: ++91 (011) 2921 7185
E-mail: [e-mail]; Website: rolibooks.com
Also at

Bangalore, Chennai, Jaipur, Kolkata, Mumbai and Varanasi

We thank Russel Harris for his help and support and Anu Pande for the translation.

Layout: Narendra Shahi
Photographs Courtesy: Zubin Mehta; Rothschild Photo, Los Angeles; Isaac Berez, Tel Aviv; David Weiss Photography, Los Angeles; Luca Moggi
and New Press Foto, Florence

ISBN: 978-81-7436-687-0

CONTENTS
F OREWORD
A UTHOR’S N OTE
1 MY EARLY YEARS IN INDIA
2 MY STUDENT YEARS IN VIENNA
3 THE VITAL YEARS
4 MONTRÉAL, LOS ANGELES AND MORE
5 NANCY – A LOVE STORY
6 ANOTHER LOVE STORY – THE ISRAEL PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA
7 FRIENDS – IN MUSIC AND MUSICAL ENCOUNTERS
8 NEW YORK, FLORENCE – THE MUSIC OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
9 BRINGING MUSIC TO PEOPLE
10 CONDUCTING – A LABOUR OF LOVE
11 THE MOVE TO MUNICH

FOREWORD
C hiselled features, dashing smile, handsome, dear Zubin Mehta, one of the greatest conductors of our times. As a fellow Indian, musician and friend, I have more reason to admire and love him. I first met Zubin in the early sixties when I went to Montréal to perform where he was the chief director of Montréal Symphony, but came to know him better an year or two later in Los Angeles when he became the director of the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra. This was after the Monterey Concert period and I was also living in Los Angeles at that time. Both Zubin and I met often in parties and on different occasions. Along with the classical fans of ours, we also had such wonderful times with the vibrant young and loving hippy crowd!
Later we got together again when he was the director and conductor of the New York Symphony Orchestra. We decided to write my Concerto Number 2 for sitar and symphony performed by the NY Symphony conducted by Zubin. I cherish the memory of those few months in New York.
I was living in NY near Gramercy Park with Sue Jones and our daughter, Geetali (Norah) was a few months old. On Zubin s suggestion, I used to go to the Lincoln Center in the mornings where Zubin used to rehearse the pieces to be performed in the evenings. This, he said, would help me know the musicians and their proficiency with the instruments, which it really did and helped me bring different sounds in the musical structure. This was a wonderful short period in my life and Zubin and I really had a great time.
Zubin loves spicy food and hot chillies. In fact he always carries a little metal box with him in his pocket, which contains some hot chillies. He asked me to write some hot chilli parts in the Concerto which I did – like the first movement in Raga Lalit which has minor second and seventh, both the fourths, and no fifth note. Also pieces in rhythmic cycles of five and a half and thirteen and half beats!
Zubin is a born conductor with music running through every vein in his body. He has worked for several humanitarian causes and is loved by everyone.
Zubin is also a very caring and sensitive person. Recently he heard Anoushka perform in Switzerland. After the concert he phoned me immediately to say how well she did. It was a wonderful gesture from him and I was deeply touched.
Being eighty-eight and still performing, much less though, I keep track of Zubin s glorious conducting tours all over the world and my love and admiration grows stronger for him and I feel so much closer to him. May God bless and protect him always.
– PANDIT RAVI SHANKAR

AUTHOR’S NOTE
W riting about my life, setting my own standards, so to say, is a venture into which I initially had to be persuaded. I hesitated for so long also because this is a task that requires intensive retrospection and it is certainly not one of my favourite occupations.
For the past fifty years I have been practicing what seems to me the most beautiful profession in the world. I am a conductor. I am surrounded by a world of masterpieces and beauty. Even so, I invariably have to look ahead before each musical project and concentrate on the current objective: the next opera production, an upcoming concert, a planned tour, a new soloist or the new work of a composer. Even what is apparently old in the field of music is new in the sense that music is transient even in the moment of its creation. The note just heard leads to the next one. The development of the entire work can never be captured instantly. And yet the hearer should be able to have an impression of the work at the end. This is why there is a constant need to rehearse and practice, to talk to one another and perhaps also to improve before each performance. For me as a conductor this implies a very detailed and thorough study of the score so that I can achieve a satisfactory result with the musicians, even though I have several decades of practice behind me and a very thorough knowledge of the work. And this is precisely why I find it so difficult to deal with the past and to look back in time, instead of looking ahead into the future. Yet my musical career has given me so many remarkable experiences and fortuitous encounters that I would like to share these with others. Perhaps I might even be able to convey some of my musical knowledge and encourage young musicians to do what they feel called upon to do with perseverance, namely to make music and to spend their lives with it.
1 MY EARLY YEARS IN INDIA

I was born at a politically turbulent time in India. However, my parents made me feel so warm and secure that I barely noticed the tremendous political upheavals that India experienced in the 1930s, and the tasks that the nation had to master – a process which was to continue in the following decades. I was born on 29 April 1936, long after British rule in India ceased to be undisputed, though it continued until I was eleven. Mahatma Gandhi led the Indian independence movement as president of the Indian National Congress for the first time from 1924 to 1937. His non-violent resistance was eventually successful but in 1936 the country was still in turmoil. In fact it was to remain so for a long time even after independence in August 1947.
My early life was untouched by all these upheavals. I grew up protected and happy. My earliest memories revolve around a loving, tenderly caring mother and a wonderful father. I can’t recall exactly when I was first exposed to music. I was a perfectly normal young boy, cheeky and in no way averse to the usual pranks and fights, as well as the normal childhood pleasures. I received my first scar in the course of a wild scuffle at the age of nine. Later I developed an active interest in cricket and played it all through my school years.
My father Mehli Mehta was born in 1908. His father was a cotton miller, and was earmarked quite early to join the family business at a later stage. Nevertheless he soon developed a tremendous passion for music. Needless to say music was not nearly as easily available in the 1920s and 1930s as it is today. One had either to play an instrument oneself or, every now and then, one could listen to great soloists who were gradually beginning to come to India. In those days musicians did not travel around the world so often.
My father heard Jascha Heifetz, the most important violinist of the twentieth century, and the Czech violinist Jan Kubelik, father of the conductor Rafael Kubelik, who often went on extensive concert tours and stopped over in Bombay on his way to Shanghai. Such concerts must have made a deep impression on him. He saw a musical cosmos opening up before him