Mehta, maestro
Zubin Mehta rose from being a starving student in Vienna to a hotshot conductor of top orchestras to an elder statesman of music diplomacy. But he believes his work is not done.
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Helmi Yusof
WHEN he was 15, Zubin Mehta stood trembling before the Bombay Symphony Orchestra and attempted to conduct it. His father, Mehli Mehta, had founded the small orchestra out of his love of Western classical music. Failing to attract enough members, he had instructed his young son - to whom he taught everything he knew - to stand in front and conduct them.
"I'll never forget that day. I still remember every second of it. My father was screaming at me the whole time," he reveals with a downward gaze and a hint of melancholy - before swiftly looking back up and bursting into belly laughs.
That situation - standing terrified before dozens of musicians older and more experienced than him - was to repeat itself over and over again until he became the world-renowned maestro who frequently performs to sold-out audiences and draws standing ovations, a scenario that would likely play out when he gives a concert with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO) in Singapore on Nov 11.
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