Zubin Mehta was born on April 29, 1936 in Bombay, India and received his first musical education under his father’s Mehli Mehta’s guidance who was a noted concert violinist and the founder of the Bombay Symphony Orchestra. After a short period of pre-medical studies in Bombay, he left for Vienna in 1954 where he eventually entered the conducting programme under Hans Swarowsky at the Akademie für Musik. Zubin Mehta won the Liverpool International Conducting Competition in 1958 and was also a prize-winner of the summer academy at Tanglewood. By 1961 he had already conducted the Vienna, Berlin and Israel Philharmonic Orchestras and has recently celebrated 50 years of musical collaboration with all three ensembles.
Mehta was Music Director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra from 1961 to 1967 and also assumed the Music Directorship of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra in 1962, a post he retained until 1978. In October 2019 he celebrated his farewell with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra to which he has served for 50 years. On this occasion he was named Music Director Emeritus of the IPO. In 1978 he took over the post as Music Director of the New York Philharmonic commencing a tenure lasting 13 years, the longest in the orchestra's history. From 1985 to 2017 he has been chief conductor of the Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in Florence.
At 90 Mehta continues to support the discovery and furtherance of musical talents all over the world. Together with his brother Zarin he is a co-chairman of the Mehli Mehta Music Foundation in Bombay where more than 200 children are educated in Western Classical Music. The Buchmann-Mehta School of Music in Tel Aviv develops young talent in Israel and is closely related to the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, as is a new project of teaching young Arab Israelis in the cities of Shwaram and Nazareth with local teachers and members of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. (From Zubin Mehta's official website).
On this afternoon's Classical Music With Foley Schuler, we will enjoy several of his classic performances on the podium, incuding, as conduct the New York Philharmonic in the Symphony No. 9, The "Choral" Symphony by Beethoven, and the Violin Concerto No. 1 by Sergei Prokofiev, with Isaac Stern as soloist.
You can hear Foley Schuler's musical selections—and stories behind the music—every weekday afternnon from 1 until 4 pm.
