Zubin Mehta. An under-rated conductor?

[cloughie]

I wonder if Mehta hasn't been negatively affected by his promotion of projects like "The Three Tenors" and similar popular concerts. I must admit these were embarrassing to me as an kunstmusik connoisseur. It felt as if Mehta was, at times, trashing the brand (himself).

He might even have made a bit of money from it!
Not many other conductors reached the higher reaches of the pop charts, Khachaturyan with Spartacus via the Onedin Line was another. In the early 1970s, Zubin also experimented with Prog with Frank Zappa 's 200 Motels - later also recorded by LAPO under Esa-Pekka Salonen. This was around the time that Malcom Arnold was sharing ideas with Deep Purple.

[gurnemanz]

In my view his reputation as a serious artist suffered when he collaborated with 'The Three Tenors'. In his younger days he was rated as a conductor with more potential than his friend Claudio Abbado.

He managed to con the LA Phil into putting up with him for 17 years as their music director and continue their association for over 50 years.

[cloughie]

In my view his reputation as a serious artist suffered when he collaborated with 'The Three Tenors'. In his younger days he was rated as a conductor with more potential than his friend Claudio Abbado.

...and arguably Abbado maybe went for a 'safer' repertoire!

[pastoralguy]

If people who weren't kunstmusik aficionados were reading this thread they'd think the lot of us were just elitist snobs. It shows how easily one can be misunderstood; we who take our music very very seriously and understand it as well as we do have very strong ideas about how it should sound, be performed and appreciated in general. I must say that it's one of the very very few things in this world I take EXTREMELY seriously and which is no laughing matter. I have otherwise a very off-beat, zany and unconventional sense of humour, but playing around with the greatest music written on the planet - or treating it with less gravitas then it deserves - doesn't ever amuse me.

Yes, I know; I need to get a life! People keep telling me that!!

Hear, hear!

[Richard Tarleton]

If people who weren't kunstmusik aficionados were reading this thread they'd think the lot of us were just elitist snobs.

Hi Tetrachord, what's a kunstmusik aficionado, can you be one without realising it? I tried googling a definition but the wikipages are in German, the English translation not much better

[ahinton]

...and arguably Abbado maybe went for a 'safer' repertoire!

Yes, just like all those other conductors who have conducted La terre est un homme because they know that it's expected of them...

[Richard Barrett]

...and arguably Abbado maybe went for a 'safer' repertoire!

Nono, Schoenberg, Xenakis, Rihm, Stockhausen, Ligeti, Boulez... safe as houses!

[Tetrachord]

Hi Tetrachord, what's a kunstmusik aficionado, can you be one without realising it? I tried googling a definition but the wikipages are in German, the English translation not much better

Kunstmusik is "art music". I hate using the term "classical music" because IMO it is specific to one style period. Art music or its German equivalent will suffice. And I think you know what the other word means!! So, no you cannot be one without realizing it!!!:-)

Cheers!

[Richard Tarleton]

¡muchísimas gracias!

[cloughie]

Nono, Schoenberg, Xenakis, Rihm, Stockhausen, Ligeti, Boulez... safe as houses!

I did say arguably....your argument is quite convincing

[ahinton]

Nono, Schoenberg, Xenakis, Rihm, Stockhausen, Ligeti, Boulez... safe as houses!

Exactly my point!

[EdgeleyRob]

Why should his reputation have suffered because of the Three Tenors concert ? and why wasn't the credibility of the singers themselves adversely affected then too ?
Trashing the brand ? surely not

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Why should his reputation have suffered because of the Three Tenors concert ? and why wasn't the credibility of the singers themselves adversely affected then too ?

Nor that of Levine, who conducted the Paris 1998 3 tenors shindig?

[Petrushka]

Why should his reputation have suffered because of the Three Tenors concert ? and why wasn't the credibility of the singers themselves adversely affected then too ?
Trashing the brand ? surely not

No, I think that for whatever reason Mehta's career had hit a plateau before then from which, again for whatever reason, it's never quite recovered.

My own thinking, mentioned above, is that it's been Mehta's misfortune to have lived in an age of a surfeit of great conductors when many another talented maestro was overshadowed by the likes of Karajan, Bernstein, Solti and Abbado among others.

[Alison]

Perhaps he needed a stint with a London orchestra on his cv. He'd have been a good choice to follow FWM at the London Philharmonic.

Apart from Brahms I'm struggling to think of any recorded symphony cycles from Mehta. Decca looked elsewhere.

I'm slightly intrigued by the Beethoven Fifth and Sixth now.