Zubin Mehta

By Zubin Mehta

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Roli Books
• Release date: Aug 10, 2012
• ISBN: 9788174368959

Book preview

Iwas 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 and felt more and more drawn to it. He felt an innate sense of belonging to this world, a world which was to increasingly determine his life. He was so inspired by what he heard that he absolutely wanted to learn how to play the violin himself. For a young Indian, trained as an accountant, this was in no way easy. My parents came from an old-fashioned Parsi family. In those days musical ambitions were certainly much better tolerated among the Parsis than among other Indian communities, but my father’s immense passion for music was definitely unusual even in his circle.

Mehli Mehta, however, was determined to fulfil his dream of playing the violin. He got himself a violin and learnt to play it. He did this without any directions, and without a teacher, except some occasional suggestions from an immigrant Italian music teacher. He simply taught himself to play. My father was extraordinarily musical. His talent and his determination to master the instrument were equally strong, so he soon reached a level where he was able to play Beethoven’s Violin Concerto without any difficulty.

I grew up in these surroundings with my father practicing music in the living room, and with the musical scores scattered all around the house. I liked looking at them even though I could barely read them. My father also had something marvellous, a record player on which we could listen to music endlessly.

Not surprisingly, this gramophone was a real monstrosity. The records in those days, that is, in 1940s, had a ridiculously short playing time so that one had to put on a new record after barely five minutes of playing a symphony or a quartet. The vinyl records with their hair-thin grooves, on which one could record really long works, did not exist back then, not to mention the CDs. Some symphonies were pressed on four or five of such records. As a result one was compelled to constantly run to the record player and to put on another one of these breakable and easily scratchable black discs extremely carefully if one wanted to hear the symphony in its entirety.

My father’s record collection was quite impressive by the standards of his time. This enabled me to listen to the most magnificent music all the time. Since I could not read at all in the beginning I distinguished between the pieces on the basis of the different coloured labels on the records. From early on I heard symphonies and became familiar with Beethoven and Johannes Brahms. I also heard a bit of Gustav Mahler. Later I would often miss my favourite sport, cricket to attend a rehearsal of my father’s string quartet.

My father founded the Bombay Symphony Orchestra in 1935, and also the Bombay String Quartet, and they also practiced at our home. In fact I was wrapped up in and surrounded by music. Music was my daily pleasure. The records, the practice sessions of the quartet and my father playing music, all this meant no more and no less to me than a very early access to paradise. I entered this musical pleasure garden as a very young person and so far nothing and no one has managed to drive me away from it.

***

I come from a traditional Parsi family. This requires an explanation, especially outside India. Parsis came from an ancient religious community whose founders are Zarathustra or Zoroaster who lived in the region north of today’s Iran around 1200 BC. This ancient religion, Zoroastrianism, was the state religion under numerous dynasties until the seventh century. After the Moslem conquest of Persia in the seventh century faithful followers of Zarathustra’s teachings migrated to India, around the ninth century and settled in the area north of Bombay (or Mumbai as it is known today). They were known as Parsis because of their Persian origin. Fundamentally, this monotheistic religion, characterized by the opposition between light and darkness and truth and lies, resembles the Jewish apocalypse. Whether the Jewish faith was really influenced by the Parsi religion is, however, still highly contested among scholars.

The name of the priest Zarathustra is composed of two words: ustra or camels, and zarath or those who are in good health, and refers to the fact that he came from a family of cattle breeders. This has little to do with all the myths and legends that came into circulation much later through Kant and Nietzsche.

For 2500 years a guiding principle given by the prophet Zarathustra has been accepted as the highest maxim by the Parsis. It can be summed up in the following words: good thoughts, good words and good deeds. Today there are no more than approximately 80,000 Parsis worldwide, and I am one among them. When I am in India I am a Parsi first and only then an Indian. It is exactly the opposite abroad. One cannot become a Parsi by converting. It is unfortunately only possible to inherit the religion through the father’s side. This is one reason why the Parsi population is steadily dwindling. There are two very contrary trends in the community namely the so-called liberals and the conservatives, which gives rise to problems. I count myself among the former and I believe that a child can be a Zoroastrian even if one of the parents is not a Parsi, provided that both the parents basically agree with each other. The conservatives, on the other hand, believe that the faith can only be passed on to children whose both parents are Parsis. In such circumstances I am afraid that in a hundred years the Parsis will be extinct.

Many languages and countless dialects are spoken in India. Parsis speak a dialect of the Gujarati language, which is spoken in the federal state of Gujarat, north of Bombay. Incidentally Gujarati was also Mahatma Gandhi’s mother tongue.

***

My father, who was very critical of himself, knew that he had to improve his violin playing. He also knew that he needed a teacher to educate him further, to mould him anew towards the great Russian school of violin playing. In May 1945, in the last phase of the Second World War, he decided to board the first available ship to the United States in order to look for a teacher in New York. My mother remained in Bombay with me and my brother Zarin, who is two years younger to me. She was alone with the two of us for four years whilst my father studied in New York. He had a scholarship from a Parsi charity foundation (TATA Endowment Fund), but since he was already too old for the reputable Juilliard School he had to take private lessons. He, however, had the good fortune to come under the tutelage of Ivan Galamian, who was one of the most important violin teachers of his time. He was an Armenian and a great exponent of the famous Russian Leopold Auer School. He had taught musicians like Michael Rabin, Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman, who later reached great heights of fame. He was a legendary figure.

These four years were certainly a difficult time for all of us, but most of all for my mother. It was not easy for her to have her husband in New York and to bring up two young sons all alone. I was nine years old when my father left for America. My mother was not burdened with any serious financial problems since she came from a rather well-to-do family. At the same time, however, she could not count upon any financial support from her husband since he had to manage rather frugally himself. We had a subtenant in the house and mother managed to cope with the situation wonderfully.

In New York my father had the opportunity to improve his innate musical talent under the strict training of this great teacher. He sent us programmes of all the concerts that he attended there along with his comments on the works performed.

***

I attended a school run by Spanish Jesuits in Bombay. This might seem unusual but there was a simple reason behind it. Schools run by Jesuits were considered the best in India. Moreover the medium of education was English, which was something that my parents attached great importance to. Above all it offered my brother and me an experience which was certainly formative for our lives. St Mary’s High School accepted male students from a very wide range of backgrounds, particularly in respect of religion. This was in a way a unique situation, but simultaneously symptomatic of the matter of course way in which one deals with religion in India – something which unfortunately does not apply to the ancient conflict between Hindus and Muslims. The approximately forty students in my class belonged to six or seven different religions. There were Hindus and Muslims, Parsis and Sikhs, Jews and Christians among us and we coexisted in perfect harmony. Nobody tried to convert us to Catholicism. We studied the gospels as literature and that was all. I believe that going to this school indoctrinated in me a high esteem for the great diversity among people and taught me very early to respect differences. I learnt quite naturally that people from completely different circumstances could get along with each other as long as they accepted that being different did not automatically imply being a foreigner, which leads all too easily to mistrust.

It seems to me that a facet of my later life, which saw me travelling all over the world and coming in contact with the most diverse people, had its roots here. On the other hand I consider myself an Indian even now. This is also why I never gave up my Indian passport. Now as ever I feel a sense of belonging to the country I come from – India.

After his return from New York my father paid greater attention to the musical scene in Bombay. He gave many concerts, organized performances and invited prominent artists. Once again there was music at home. He opened new horizons for me including the reading of music scores. I was thirteen years old at the time and a quick learner. Soon I knew all the important symphonies really well, many of them simply from piano scores. This proved to be of some advantage later, though I realize I missed something crucial: the opera.

In any case I loved orchestral music and very early imagined becoming a conductor. In truth, deep down, I became a conductor, because I had always wanted to conduct Brahms’s four symphonies and Richard Strauss’ tone poems. I knew these pieces inside out from records and also from orchestral scores. Naturally the records in those days did not have today’s sound quality, but my father’s steadily growing record collection at least gave me the opportunity to listen to all the prominent conductors. These were Toscanini, of whom there are only a very few recordings, Stokowski and Furtwängler. I heard recordings of Jascha Heifetz along with a large body of his violin repertoire. All of them were a musical revelation for me. For my father, on the other hand, they served as an example in improving his understanding of music.

As far as music was concerned, my father was often very strict with me. When I was about fifteen years old Yehudi Menuhin came to Bombay. Menuhin, who was a friend of the Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and very India-friendly, expressed his willingness to play with the Bombay Symphony Orchestra. This orchestra, consisted of a very colourful assortment of musicians, most of whom were definitely not professionals. There were several immigrants among them, some of them very talented, but by and large the orchestra did not come up to very high expectations. The Parsis were all dilettantes. There were Christian professional musicians from Goa, mostly string players. Woodwind and brass instrument players were provided by members of the Indian navy band, who appeared in their uniforms even during concerts. My father obviously tried to prepare the orchestra for Menuhin as well as he could. They were supposed to render Johannes Brahms’s Violin Concerto. They practiced tirelessly under his strict discipline. I, on the other hand, was instructed to hold together the orchestra, in other words, to conduct the orchestra, while my father played the solo part. This is how I came to conduct for the very first time. However carefully I tried to listen and no matter how well I knew the score, the whole thing proved to be rather disappointing. I was severely reprimanded because I had apparently forgotten to give the third horn or the oboist his cue. (This then was the first time that I stood before an orchestra, and the result was by no means encouraging.)

My father was once again an autodidact. Just like he taught himself how to play the violin, he also taught himself how to conduct. This entirely independent learning was his special talent. In his four years in New York he probably went to a concert every evening, saw and heard a lot, and also observed the great conductors.

The first time that I really conducted publicly was when I accompanied my father at a radio recording in Bombay. He played Bach’s Concerto in A Minor and I conducted the orchestra, and that too from memory. I had unendingly studied the piece with my father and had a very precise idea of how it should sound. Whether I actually conducted correctly is difficult to say today, but it was a very beautiful experience for me. Making music together with my father was very special.

Sometime later Yehudi Menuhin came again to Bombay and played Bach’s Double Concerto with my father. Once again the already legendary Menuhin was humble enough to play with Mehli Mehta!

All this seems to point towards my later musical career, but actually it was unthinkable at that time. It is true that I was supposed to improve my piano playing – I had already given up the violin when my father left for America – but I have to admit that I never saw myself as an instrumentalist. Besides, I always had to be forced a little to practice. I was too lazy. Actually I preferred the passionately loved game of cricket to the piano. Incidentally, cricket is still a passion with me.

That I would follow in my father’s footsteps and become a musician was out of the question. My family had decided that I would study medicine. It is absolutely normal in India to accept the decisions taken by the family. Tradition and cohesion in the family are very important and decisive for Indians. Hence my brother was sent to London at the age of sixteen to study accounting, while the medical profession was chosen for me. Traditionally there are very few professions considered acceptable to the upper middle class in India and these professions counted among them. So I began a study of medicine, without any protest and completely as a matter of course.

It, however, became clear after two terms that medicine was not the right choice for me. I was in the fortunate position of being able to convey this to my parents, and express my wish to devote my life to music. Eventually, my parents agreed, just as they have always stood by me whenever I have asked them for advice, or whenever I was faced with major decisions. They encouraged me or discussed whether something was good for me or not. Finally they gave their consent to my wish to become a musician and from then on my entire life took a completely new and very unusual course.

I had already studied music theory as per my father’s wishes. He had sent me to the same old Italian teacher called Oddone Savini, from whom he had also taken classes himself earlier. Savini lived in Pune. This meant that once a week I had to travel three hours by train to Pune in order to pursue my studies.

My parents, however, had other plans for my real training. These plans took me far away from home to a foreign land in another continent. I was supposed to go to Vienna where my cousin Dady Mehta was already studying the piano with Professor Bruno Seidlhofer, a leading authority.

So I set out at the age of eighteen for Austria, which gradually became a second home for me in many respects and which still imparts energy and inspiration to me, the real musical foundation for my profession.

In 1954 the journey from Bombay to Vienna still represented a big adventure. The journey took place in many stages. First I boarded a ship in Bombay, which took me to Genoa. Until then I had been a more or less well-protected young man living a sheltered life in his family circle in Bombay. This also implied that I didn’t have to take care of the various details of daily life and to worry about my livelihood.

All that changed with one stroke. My parents had chosen Vienna as my study destination also because my cousin Dady was there. He had been living abroad for a long time, initially as a piano student in Paris and later in Vienna. My parents probably hoped that the somewhat older Dady would take care of me and help me settle in the completely new and unfamiliar environment. In retrospect it is hard to say who took care of whom. Dady recently retired after decades of being a reputed professor of piano at the University of Michigan. He has two sons, Bejun and Navi. Bejun is a countertenor in great demand worldwide and sings in all the great opera houses. Navi is a successful violinist and conductor in San Diego.

And so I was sent off on this long journey. Everything was new and exciting for me. I met other young men on the ship who were also going to Europe. We were still very young and had no experience in any field. However, we naturally felt very grown up.

Upon arrival in Genoa we fooled around a little. After all we were on our own for the first time without parental supervision. Nobody held us on a string or seemed to want to correct us. We experienced absolute freedom, possibly like any young person left on his own for the first time. Obviously we had girls on our minds, and not necessarily the kind of girls that we could have met within the ambit of our parental homes or schools in Bombay. But it surely was a part of our emotional education, or whatever.

From Genoa I then travelled further by train to Vienna. I didn’t know any German. English, on the other hand, was a language that didn’t get me far in the Vienna of the fifties. I did not really think too much about the future or about coping with what would come my way. I knew that my cousin was expecting me and trusted that I would somehow be able to manage. My real aim was clear: I wanted to go to the music academy in Vienna and take up my studies immediately. I wanted to finally learn