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American writer and satirist Ambrose Bierce once summarily dismissed a review request with "The covers of this book are too far apart.” This reviewer, quite contrarily, categorically declares Bakhtiar K. Dadabhoy’s (pictured) brilliant biography of the long-enduring music icon Zubin Mehta — considering its range and scope — is not a page too long. This substantial hardback, published in timely felicitation of the well-loved music conductor’s four score years, six decades of which reflect his burgeoning career, is a pleasure to handle and a joy to peruse.
A note at the very end warrants celebration — the inspired use throughout of the 15th century Manutius-Bembo font. It makes for a splendidly devised production.
Two relevant articles are noticed in passing. Both are in recent issues of Parsiana, and each deserves mention: "Booking the maestro” (May 21, 2016); and "No intention of slowing down” (June 7, 2016). By providing items on the background to Dadabhoy’s superb biography, they materially ease this reviewer’s task. Sub-titled A Musical Journey, Dadabhoy’s portly tome should be best regarded as a saga of epic proportions, whilst whispering that it often becomes hagiography.
Embellished with several monochromes and color plates to acquaint one with Mehta’s family, as well as his meetings with the great and the good, the reader is comfortably placed to appreciate the rise and long exercised eminence in the musical world of Zubin Mehta, undoubtedly a modern day universal hero. As an authoritative, accurate recounting, Dadabhoy’s offering fulfils all one could expect from an authorized biography. Several accessible video interviews and performances with various orchestras should additionally augment the considerable enjoyment that this book generates. There also are Mehta’s LP and CD recordings.
It is, however, the book’s extensive Index that provides essential pointers for Mehta’s life story. Barring a few pagination slips, its listings are grist to this writer’s review mill. Comprehensive enough, it is recommended that the reader consults it frequently, for chapter contents often become so interwoven that major items could be overlooked. There are occasional minor repeats, rather like musical directions, but no matter!
Dadabhoy’s magisterial study is a work of great dedication, of awe and adulation, and as a triumphal paean which does the honorand proud. He handles his musical notes and asides with effortless assurance. Most gratifyingly, he wholly avoids the mawkishness to which Parsi biographers are prone. His crowded tome, packed to bursting, unfolds in the manner of overture, symphonic tone poem, concerto, and virtuosic finale. It succeeds in credibly maintaining a chronology.
The author very wisely avoids cataloging Mehta’s vast recorded output — several dozen items at the last count; allowing for the criss-crossing of record labels and versions between North America and Europe would have made this a thankless task. There is, nonetheless, a very determined Italian lady, Francesca Zardini of the Florentine Maggio Musicale who is on course to "enumerate every single concert conducted by Zubin!” The latest fashion for massive CD boxed sets may yet see the "complete Zubin Mehta” (to date, that is!), copyrights permitting. But the conductor himself is nowhere near culmination of his musical career — he has more scores to revise and fresh orchestras to "build!”
Mehta has been fortunate in having his performances recorded by the formidable Decca ffrr (full frequency range recording) team of sound engineers. One must offer up thanks that this crucial task did not befall some American labels, noted by fastidious listeners for indifferent microphone placings and balance, and often for uncomfortable close-ups of soloists to the detriment of orchestral clarity.
There are chapters in which Dadabhoy obviously felt the need to group together some world-famed conductors and instrumental performers. However much this bunching might seem to some as mere name dropping, with this author it assumes different — and appropriately telling — purposes. For example, it is necessary to know that the Israel Philharmonic came into being in 1936 at the behest of the renowned violinist Bronislaw Huberman for whom music was "Humanity is the goal.” It was a timely foundation preceding the abominations of the 10 following years and just prior to the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. 
Elsewhere he uses short runs to illustrate the continuing influences of world renowned conductors of yore, and some to place past notable instrumentalists alongside the new upcoming generations.
Whereas Mehli, his father, had a penchant for French composers, Zubin with his Viennese influences unsurpris-ingly displays his predilection for the German Romantics. Starting out from the late classical Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, one notes Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, Richard Wagner, Anton Bruckner and Gustav Mahler, with Richard Strauss to form his (main) musical hept­ad. Without stretching an astronomical simile too far, one is tempted to see these seven stars signposting Zubin as Pole Star. Even today it brings a smile when one reads that his mother Tehmina anxiously consulted astrologers about her sons’ careers.

 

 

 

Zarin, younger to Zubin by two years, went on to qualify as a chartered accountant; his interest in jazz involved him in stylistic fusions, and peaked with his appointment as manager of affairs of the New York Philharmonic — a prestigious position he held for several years until his recent retirement and resettling with his family in Chicago. 
Of the great man himself, born in Bombay in 1936, Dadabhoy has much to relate, and he does so with aplomb and controlled enthusiasm. The biography follows him through his musical development from fervid enthusiast in Bombay to the fabled heights in Europe, North America and his homeland. Whereas Mehli became disillusioned with the uncalled for lack of appreciation of quality performers and took up exclusive American citizenship, Zubin maintains his Indian nationality, visiting India with various orchestras and soloists to greatly enhance musical awareness there.
There are some delightful vignettes: five devoted friends playing the Schubert Trout Quintet with spontaneity and obvious affection, with Daniel Barenboim (pianist), his late wife Jacqueline du Pré (cello), Itzhak Perlman (violin), Pinchas Zukerman (viola), and Zubin on the double bass. Music-making for these topflight artistes was pure enjoyment, and for which they were "a family within a family!”
Far more awe-inspiring was Zubin’s collaboration with Jascha Heifetz, a prickly, capricious genius whose legendary violin playing will ever remain with musicians and music lovers. As Dadabhoy delicately puts it, this wizard of the violin was "a little temperamental.” As Zubin narrated it, after a nerve-wracking start to the Beethoven Violin Concerto during a public performance, Heifetz invited him to his Los Angeles home to discuss at great length just how this early 19th century master work should be accompanied, and from then on proceeded to entertain cordial relations with the flamboyant, youthful Parsi conductor.
Zubin’s violinist father had frequently referred to Heifetz as "God,” and the son was overjoyed to find that the violin legend was present among the audience in one of his early Los Angeles concerts. Old timers like the undersigned recall that when the famed teacher Leopold Auer was asked about his most accomplished students, he dwelt at fond length on all highly esteemed qualifiers. When it came to Heifetz, Auer was reputed to have only said: "How does one speak of a god?” Zubin, in turn, excitedly put through an overseas call to inform Mehli that "God was in the audience!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Regarding Zubin’s international stature also as top flight opera conductor, Dadabhoy chose a Time magazine critic’s effusive "The Next Toscanini?” to head his operatic chapter. It strikes this reviewer that Time has succumbed to the American vogue for the cult of personality. ArturoToscanini was a martinet of a conductor: being short-sighted, he thoroughly prepared well in advance the various items for his performances without recourse to any scores at the podium. His baton control was terrifyingly accurate; his orchestras were, it was said, drilled and not rehearsed! Score directions had to be punctiliously followed to honor the composers’ intentions; interpretation was down to others! Anecdotists recall that a conductor friend of Maurice Ravel’s once remonstrated with him on his treatment of orchestra members like "slaves.” The composer laconically shot back: "But they are slaves!” So, dear Time critic, just how is Zubin to follow as a "next” Toscanini?
The particular opera which excited the critic was Zubin’s grasp and interpretation of Mozart’s Die Entfűhrung aus dem Serail (one containing the Islamic greeting "Salaam aleikum!”)
Readers may well anticipate a Zoroastrian conducting, say, Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra and, to be sure, Zubin did not disappoint. With his love for Mozart’s operas, however, one wonders at the absence of Die Zauberflȍte (The Magic Flute) from Zubin’s repertory: it gives a major role to the purifying presence of Sarastro (read Zoroaster) — perhaps he fears the ecstatic swooning of pious Parsis?
On fusion music, the experiments are less than happy. Agreeing to a collaboration with Frank Zappa, Zubin was nonplussed and not a little angry at the fusionist’s arbitrary takeover of his classically conditioned orchestra. It resulted in a fission to be remedied years later.
Some will remember the limited appeal of the Yehudi Menuhin-Stéphane Grappelli joint venture. Others will point to the Menuhin-Ravi Shankar partnership. With Zubin, however, the Indian master sitarist enjoyed a rather longer success. Dadabhoy puts his finger on the real reason: the incompatibility arose from the Indian classical tradition which improvises, and the Western orchestral organization that results in a cohesive whole. Famous western classical names conceded that while they liked classical Indian music, after some time it sounded monotonous and seemed never-ending! Zubin, convinced otherwise, soldiered on with his determination to achieve the tonal crossovers required for wider understanding and smoother acceptance.
On Zubin’s involvement with several orchestras, it is important to note his extraordinary efforts towards orchestral builds. His time with the Montreal Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and not least with the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino had greatly benefited their respective members. His devotion and patient training enhanced mediocre rated ensembles into well respected orchestras.
It is sadly not possible to dwell at length on Zubin’s initial tussles with the politicians over-seeing the Israel Philharmonic and the gradual acceptance by Jewish audiences of the once abhorred composers from Germany’s Nazi era — Strauss and Carl Orff among them — and even the Fűhrer’s much admired 19th century Wagner. For the very many survivors from that era of horror, such memories were too painful to allow appreciation despite efforts of the all Jewish orchestra and now its life conductor. Zubin has achieved the near unthinkable, and Bronislaw Huberman’s vision has been brought to fruition. Dadabhoy tells these stories of the Parsi conductor’s great successes at length. In this context Strauss’ tone poem titled Ein Heldenleben, "A hero’s life” would be admirably befitting, as diligent readers will appreciatively ascertain for themselves.
With this substantial book, incontes­tably a classic since its publication, Dadabhoy has com­fortably established himself as an icon in his own right among Parsi literati. A Musical Journey is replete with several dozens of people, musical personalities and world famed artistes, such that Dadabhoy might well be short-sightedly accused of mere name cataloging. But far is it from this: he handles them all with exemplary intelligence and profound knowledge. Nowhere in him does one see any partisanship of convenience, an exception being made for Toscanini. The fact that he had help from several quarters and personal assistants need not hold the reader back from realizing this marvellous biographer’s tremendous achievement in getting together a daunting amount of published material and the fond recollections of Zubin’s childhood friends. He has provided a glorious narrative to savor at length — and at one’s musical leisure.