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Zubin Mehta, who just received the 2006 Kennedy Center Honor, has long been one of the leading conductors of the world. Born in 1936 in Bombay (now Mumbai), India, he received his early musical training from his father, a violinist and cofounder of the Bombay Symphony Orchestra, and then went on to study with Hans Swarowsky at Vienna's Academy of Music. Mehta became music director of the Israel Philharmonic in 1969 and was named its music director for life in 1981. Formerly, he was music director of the New York Philharmonic (1978-1991) and the Los Angeles Philharmonic (1962-78). He has been closely associated with several other major organizations, including the Vienna Philharmonic and Vienna State Opera, the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, and the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in Florence. In addition to such popular appeal events as the Three Tenors concerts (he conducted the first two) and a televised production of Puccini's "Turandot" from Beijing's Forbidden City (broadcast on GP in 1999), Mehta has often used music to make important statements about human rights, with concerts in the shadow of the Buchenwald concentration camp and in war-ravaged Sarajevo. He spoke to GREAT PERFORMANCES by phone from Tel Aviv, Israel.
GREAT PERFORMANCES: This will be your fourth appearance on the podium for the Vienna Philharmonic's New Year's Day concert. What do you find most satisfying about participating in this tradition?
Zubin Mehta: To play the music of Johann Strauss with the people who have so much love for it. They take it as seriously -- as charmingly, also -- as a Mozart or Brahms symphony.
GP: What's the process of selecting works for the New Year's concert?
ZM: Each time there is a new program. There are six pieces on this year's program that the orchestra has never played. There is a great expert, a professor in his 80s who keeps score, who knows everything that has been played in these concerts. He makes suggestions on the programming, to keep it fresh. He also knows what will suit me best.
GP: Do you get an input into the programming too?
ZM: Yes. This year, I put in one request -- an intimate, beautiful, quiet waltz, "Where the Lemon Blossoms Bloom" [by Johann Strauss].
GP: Have you always been drawn to Viennese music?
ZM: I lived in Vienna and studied there. I grew up listening to Johann Strauss as much as Mozart, and I consider both of them to be valid classical composers. I don't treat Strauss as "light" music.
GP: There are so many subtle aspects to performing a Viennese waltz in what is considered an authentic, idiomatic style -- all the little inflections in the rhythm, for example. Do you ever have any differences of opinion with the Philharmonic on how and when to apply rubato?
ZM: Sometimes they have discussions among themselves about it. It's natural for them to have different ideas, even in a waltz like the "Blue Danube" that they've played so many times. I've done a lot of Johann Strauss with them, even in normal concerts in Vienna and when we go on tour. I must have done "Viennese Blood" with them 20 times.
GP: Is it difficult to get orchestras in other countries to play in a true Viennese style?
ZM: You can't command charm, even if the orchestra loves the music. Orchestras can do justice to Mozart or Richard Strauss or Bruckner -- American orchestras play great Bruckner. But they don't get Johann Strauss; they don't play it with the right accent the way a German orchestra does. It's like having an actor reading Shakespeare. He might be a great actor, he might do it justice, but still not have the right "accent" -- the accent of Laurence Olivier or Kenneth Branagh.
GP: The Vienna Philharmonic seems to play almost everything so effortlessly. Do you need much rehearsal with them?
ZM: We rehearse a lot, and they want to rehearse a lot. On tour, no matter how many times they have played the same Brahms symphony, for example, they always rehearse it. You can't get all orchestras to do this on tour, but they insist on it. Sometimes, when they were touring with Leonard Bernstein in his older age, he would skip the acoustic rehearsal before a concert. But the musicians would still meet and do it anyway with an assistant conductor.
GP: Looking back on your long career, is there anything you would change if you could?
ZM: I would change a few things, whether some interpretations or some things on a human level. I was for 30 years a music director in America, and I made some human mistakes in the treatment of colleagues that I would change.
GP: What are you most proud of?
ZM: Using music for purposes other than just subscription concerts. With the Israel Philharmonic, which is a standard bearer for their country, we played behind the Iron Curtain, even in countries that had no diplomatic relations with Israel. And we visited my country after many years of no relations between India and Israel. In '94 I was there with the Israel Philharmonic and Itzhak Perlman. They played for free to raise money for India.
GP: Your relationship with the Israel Philharmonic is extraordinary in terms of longevity -- 30 years -- and rapport. What is the secret of the chemistry you have with them?
ZM: It has just been an evolution, concert after concert. Each concert prepares you for the next. I know each member of this orchestra very well. I have hired almost 95 percent of them. The relationship just keeps maturing.
GP: One of the biggest music stories to come out of the Middle East has been the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra founded by Daniel Barenboim. What are your views about the organization?
ZM: That orchestra is the only forum where Arabs and Jews are sitting together and making music. I think that is just wonderful. Hats off.
GP: Is the Israel Philharmonic involved in any efforts to bridge the gap between Arabs and Israelis?
ZM: We just played in Nazareth for the first time. A thousand Arabs came to the concert and cheered. Many of them were at a concert for the first time. And they can't wait for us to come back. I tried to do this same sort of (outreach) with the New York Philharmonic when I was music director there. Soon after I came to New York -- it was in '79 or '80, I think -- we played in Harlem for the first time. That was a big deal then. They said, "The New York Philharmonic finally takes the A train." And when I was music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, I started a minority program. Our musicians taught African-American students for $1 a lesson. A bassoon player in one of the major American orchestras is from our program in L.A. So, who knows? Maybe the first Arab will play in the Israel Philharmonic one day. This really is a dream of mine, and I know we will do it.
Interview by Tim Smith for GREAT PERFORMANCES Online conducted in December 2006.
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