In Thursday’s (2/17) Wall Street Journal, David Mermelstein writes, “Zubin Mehta’s picture does not appear in dictionaries next to the word ‘cosmopolitan.’ But perhaps it should. Few people better embody worldliness than this Bombay-born, Vienna-trained conductor, who has enjoyed long-term associations with many leading orchestras and opera houses world-wide. Yet of all his artistic relationships, one stands apart: his 50-year collaboration with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. … Their latest tour together, which heralds the orchestra’s 75th anniversary in December, begins Saturday in Naples, Fla., and concludes at the Walt Disney Concert Hall [in Los Angeles] on March 1. … The conductor takes credit for having broadened the orchestra’s repertory and encouraged greater stylistic flexibility. Yet some things remain innate. ‘Mahler is in their blood,’ he said. ‘Leonard Bernstein once told me that even sight-reading Mahler, this orchestra sounds Jewish.’ And then there is the Wagner ban—a particularly sore subject for Mr. Mehta. ‘We just don’t talk about it anymore,’ he said. ‘I tried and Daniel Barenboim tried, both unsuccessfully. There are still people with tattoos on their arms in Israel, and they don’t want it. So we shy away from it. But Wagner is half my world, and it’s frustrating for me not to play it with my favorite orchestra.’ ”
Posted February 17, 2011
