ZUBIN MEHTA: A WORLD FULL OF MUSIC (TV)
Summary
A documentary film profiling world-famous classical music conductor Zubin Mehta. Mehta discusses his background, growing up in an upper-middle class Parsi family in Bombay, India. His father Mehli Mehta was a violinist and co-founder of the Bombay Symphony Orchestra, and thus young Mehta was inundated at an early age with music and took to it readily. He recounts his journey to Vienna in the late 1950’s, where he studied under conductor Hans Swarowsky, whom he describes as sharing a sort of “father-son” relationship with. He notes that he found himself overwhelmed by his first real-life exposure to symphonic music and new sound styles not available in India. Mehta took up the bass in Vienna, as he wanted to play in an orchestra so as to see the conductor from the musician’s point of view. He soon transitioned into conducting for the Vienna Philharmonic and truly began his career as the musical director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra in 1960. Soon thereafter he began his tenure as the director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1962, a position that would end up lasting 16 years. He conducted his first concert in Salzburg in 1962, and by 1969 left Montreal in order to pursue a directorship in Israel, serving both in there and in Los Angeles simultaneously. Despite his great success in Los Angeles, he felt it was time for a change and in 1978 worked with the New York Philharmonic for 13 seasons, conducting over 1,100 concerts with them. Other than his official directorships, Mehta also served in Florence in 1969, where he was the music director for the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino for one year. He also conducted the Ring Cycle in the early 1980’s, and more recently fulfilled a dream of putting on a performance of the opera Turandot in the Forbidden City in Beijing. Footage shows Mehta working with the Israel Philharmonic on Till Eulenspiegel, going over the themes and tempo of the piece in detail. He comments about how fortunate he is that he gets to fully explore the “genius” of the music of the great composers he has worked with. He notes that conducting has a “mystical” feel to it since it revolves around communication not only with the entire orchestra but with groups therein, or even a single musician, and that the job of the conductor is to coalesce the interpretations and passion of each individual musician into an end goal, the “light at the end of the tunnel.” Mehta also talks about his parents; he praises his mother Tehmina Mehta for adjusting to a radically different home and lifestyle to move with his father to Manchester from Bombay. He also discusses his father and his work with the American Youth Orchestra, which he founded. Mehta also recounts his various opera work, such as a 1991 performance of Carmen. He talks about how some artists are on the “hinge” of advancement in their fields, and how truly great musicians not only achieve the zenith of their style but also lay the foundation for what is to come. His most recent venture is the directorship of the Bavarian Opera House in Munich; he is excited to be working with a repertoire house of its caliber, as it is something of a new experience for him. There is also commentary from his wife Nancy and his son Mervon. Remarking on the massive amount of work he usually takes on at once, Mehta remarks that “too much has been the law of my life,” and that it comes natural for those who are truly dedicated to their craft.
Details
- NETWORK: PBS
- DATE: November 30, 1997
- RUNNING TIME: 1:00:00
- COLOR/B&W: Color
- CATALOG ID: B:75149
- GENRE: Public affairs/documentaries
- SUBJECT HEADING: Public affairs/documentaries
- SERIES RUN: PBS - TV, 1998
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- Reiner E. Moritz … Producer, Writer
- Zubin Mehta … Interviewee
- Nancy Mehta … Interviewee
- Mehli Mehta … Interviewee
- Mervon Mehta … Interviewee
- Daniel Barenboim
- Karl Böhm
- Maria Ewing
- René Kollo
- Luis Lima
- Tehmina Mehta
- Waltraud Meier
- Hans Swarowsky
- Bernd Weikl
- Frederic West