Zubin Mehta: A world full of music - Portrait on the conductor by Reiner E. Moritz (1998)

In a relaxed interview given at his home in Los Angeles, conductor Zubin Mehta looks back over his career and reflects on what makes his “mystical profession” such a unique phenomenon. Zubin Mehta is undoubtedly one of the great conductors of our time, equally at home in opera houses and on the concert platform. Following long and successful tenures as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic (1962-78) and New York Philharmonic (1978-91), he spent most of the 1990s working as a freelance conductor with the world’s leading orchestras and opera companies. In 1998 he became Music Director of the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich. Over the years he has also dedicated time to the Israel Philharmonic, with whom he enjoys a special relationship. “I am one of the few people that is blessed,” he says, “in that every morning when I wake up I touch genius – the genius of the music that I perform. Whether it’s Bach, Mozart, Richard Strauss, Stravinsky or Schoenberg, I am constantly in the presence of greatness.” He also tells his life story: from leaving his home in Bombay at the age of eighteen, already steeped in classical music on account of his forceful Parsi father – a great violinist, who, until very recently, still ran an American youth orchestra – to learning the tricks of his trade in Vienna and elsewhere. Zubin Mehta’s great love of music and his charismatic personality inform this vibrant, music-filled program. He is seen in rehearsal and in extracts from orchestral and operatic performances, conducting pieces by composers ranging from Brahms to Bartók and Bizet. Among the archive material used is an unforgettable extract from Christopher Nupen’s film The Trout, showing the young Mehta playing double bass with his friends Barenboim, Zukerman, Perlman and du Pré. Portrait by Reiner E. Moritz, 1998.