In The Indian Express, a review of Zubin Mehta: The Score of My Life, an engrossing account of his journey from Bombay to the concert halls of Europe:
At the age of 24, Zubin Mehta was a struggling, out-of-work musician in Vienna, hoping for a break. A year later, he had the world at his feet. Job offers came pouring in. He was approached by the Montreal Orchestra to be music director. The New York, Los Angeles and Israel philharmonics offered him a chance to conduct. At 25, Mehta became the youngest musician ever to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic. Mehta modestly suggests that an angel was watching over him that momentous year, 1961. He was able to step into the shoes of world renowned colleagues because of their last-minute cancellations of concerts. Besides he had the services of a very able agent in Siegfried Hearst.
But Mehta’s extraordinary journey from Bombay, a backwater as far as classical western music was concerned, to the most prestigious podiums of the music world was not so much about luck as genius and dedication. Classical western music as a career was not an option in the upper middleclass, close-knit Parsi family in which Mehta grew up in the 1940s and ’50s. In fact, Mehta started out as a medical student, just as his father, Mehli Mehta, had initially taken up accountancy, though his real love too was music. Mehli, a gifted musician in his own right, was a self-taught violinist who founded the Bombay Symphony Orchestra in 1935 and played in the Bombay String Quartet. Mehli nurtured his son’s talent and eventually permitted him to go to Vienna to study music, utilising a legacy from his grandfather. In Vienna, young Mehta experienced an exquisite sense of rediscovery, listening to music live in the great concert halls and not secondhand from his father’s vast collection of scratchy sound records of inadequate quality.
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