24 FLAC Discount
By a short margin, Zubin Mehta was the first of the conductors assembled here to direct a concert of the Berliner Philharmoniker, and he repeated his programme from September 1961 – Gottfried von Einem, Robert Schumann and Gustav Mahler – on the 50th anniversary of his debut. Son of an Indian violin virtuoso, Mehta was 18 when, as mentioned earlier, he embarked on his conducting studies in Vienna with Hans Swarowsky, whose other pupils included Claudio Abbado, Giuseppe Sinopoli and Iván and Adam Fischer. With the Philharmoniker, Mehta has, in addition to the Fourth, Seventh and Eighth, also conducted Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony, whose startlingly modern expressive content he emphasized in a 1971 concert by juxtaposing it with Krzysztof Penderecki’s Threnody “To the Victims of Hiroshima”.
The unforgettable performance of the Eighth documented here from 2012 was his first performance of this work with the Philharmoniker. It was also programmed for performances in November 2019 during his tour of Japan with the orchestra. Among the high points of Mehta’s collaboration with the Philharmoniker in recent seasons are performances of Verdi’s Otello at the Easter Festival in Baden-Baden as well as in concert in Berlin. The most important music directorships Mehta has held over the years include the Bavarian State Opera (from 1998 to 2006) and the Orchestra of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino (1985 – 2017), as well as the Philharmonic orchestras of Los Angeles (1962 – 1978), New York (1978 – 1991) and Israel (from 1977 until 2019, the 50th anniversary of his IPO debut).
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