Zubin Mehta says goodbye to the Madrid viewers in fashion with Schubert | Culture | EUROtoday

“My love affair with Spain began in 1964, when I had the great pleasure of making music with the National Orchestra of Spain in the miraculous Alhambra in Granada.” This is how the legendary Indian director begins Zubin Mehta (Bombay, 89 years previous) the chapter added to his memoirs, printed in German and translated into Spanish with the title The rating of my life (Rivera Editors). On that event he additionally started his friendship with Queen Sofía – then a princess – who one night time took him to see the gypsies dance within the Sacromonte caves.

A couple of days after that first success in Spain, Mehta met a younger diplomat in Bucharest named Alfonso Aijón who, six years later, would discovered Ibermúsica, the oldest and most influential personal classical music promoter within the nation. “The fruits of this relationship, both friendly and professional, are reflected in the 127 concerts in which he was the protagonist,” recollects Aijón in this system of the 2 intensive concert events provided by the director on the event of his ninetieth birthday, which he’ll rejoice on the finish of April.

An night—Saturday, February 14—and a loss of lifeon Sunday the fifteenth, in entrance of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestrathe group created in 1999 by Daniel Barenboim which brings collectively younger Israeli, Palestinian and different Arab musicians. The legendary Argentine director and pianist, who has considerably diminished his performances since he made public that he suffers from Parkinson’sadditionally attended each concert events, sitting within the stalls of the National Music Auditorium subsequent to Queen Sofía.

The two intensive applications – with overtures and symphonies by Wagner, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and Schubert, in addition to a live performance by Bruch – will probably be heard immediately, Monday on the Auditori de Barcelona and on Wednesday the 18th on the Palau de la Música Catalana. Subsequently, the tour will proceed with distinctive performances on the nineteenth, twenty first and twenty second on the Príncipe Felipe Auditorium in Oviedo, the Auditorium Giovanni Agnelli in Turin and the Musikverein in Vienna, respectively.

Mehta’s extreme bodily limitations have conditioned the musical final result of each concert events. If at first of 2024, throughout his final go to to Spain on the head of the Munich Philharmonicthat dynamic director that all of us bear in mind on the head of the New Year’s live performance or of The Three Tenors He had already reworked right into a pleasant and fragile previous man who entered the stage slowly, leaning on a cane. The state of affairs two years later is much more delicate.

Mehta now seems in a wheelchair and desires the assistance of 1 or two individuals to be lifted to a chair on the rostrum, along with the fixed help of the concertmaster of the Divan, the violinist Mohamed Hiber.

The lack of visible acuity constitutes one other handicap for the aged maestro, who appears not to have the ability to precisely distinguish musicians situated at a sure distance, though he retains the prodigious reminiscence that all the time allowed him to conduct intensive applications with out scores. At first it’s troublesome for him to enter every work, though he finally ends up being contaminated by the vitality of the orchestra and concludes with larger freshness than within the preliminary bars.

It was confirmed in Saturday’s live performance with an overture of Rienziby Richard Wagner, heavy and intensely gradual, missing packaging within the crescendo drama of the battle and which solely rose barely within the triumphant re-exposition of the theme of prayer.

He continued Violin Concerto No. 1de Max Bruch, con Maria Duenas as a soloist. The wonderful violinist from Granada fulfilled her dream of taking part in below the route of Mehta, though the Indian conductor now finds it troublesome to offer the soloist with that “magic carpet to float on” that In 1968, cellist Jacqueline Du Pré acknowledged.

He bought it within the lyric adagiothe most effective moments of the night, however not within the opening motion, the place the violinist’s rhapsodic enlargement collided with the heaviness of the everybody within the climax. And neither within the finalewith a Hungarian air, the place the soloist’s discomfort resulted in a number of technically unsafe passages.

Dueñas took the ground to rejoice the presence in Madrid not solely of Mehta, but in addition of Barenboim, “two of the most important pillars of classical music,” and thanked Queen Sofía “for her unwavering support for classical music.” He then compensated himself with two beautiful suggestions: his regular piano-less model of the Vals unhappyby Franz von Vecsey, and Song of Veslemøyof the Mosaic Suite by Johan Halvorsen, which connects along with his participation within the movie Measures for a Funeralde Sofia Bohdanowicz.

The fourth symphony by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, within the second a part of this system, was a disappointment. Little stays of Mehta’s athletic Tchaikovsky, as managed because it was theatrical, from his years in Los Angeles.

Added to the superficiality of what was heard in Madrid have been quite a few inaccuracies within the entries and evident difficulties in mastering the decisive ones. tighteningthat indication that requires intensifying velocity and expressive rigidity.

He scherzo improved because of the involvement of concertmaster Mohamed Hiber, who successfully coordinated the effervescence of the pinched and the great disposition of the winds within the administration of avenue music.

He cheerful with fireplace In the top he discovered with effort the favored uproar, given the problem of constructing the orchestra sound very sturdy (fff), though Mehta managed to tense the speech within the concluding minutes.

The loss of life Sunday was very totally different. Although the Indian grasp has by no means been a Beethovenian – he recorded his solely symphonic cycle between 2021 and 2022 in Florence (Dynamic)—, their performances have been convincing, with that autumnal air that provides time to the music and doesn’t power any climatic second.

In the opening Eleonora no. 3 It lacked thriller at first and explosiveness on the finish, however it benefited from an orchestra very accustomed to taking part in Beethoven, to which it added beneficiant phrasing and a trademark timbral heat.

In the case of the Eighth SymphonyMehta as soon as once more imposed his musical knowledge in a model that lacked dynamics, dialectics and rigidity, however which as soon as once more benefited from the predisposition of the orchestra and the lyrical vein of the conductor, particularly within the minueto.

Where Mehta’s serene knowledge labored greatest on Sunday was with Franz Schubert, of whom he has all the time been an awesome interpreter. Of the Symphony no. 9 “The Great One” the Viennese composer has performed a number of wonderful variations, such because the recorded reside with the Vienna Philharmonic on the 1985 Salzburg Festival (Orfeo).

The Indian maestro adopted a brand new association for the orchestra, with the woodwind and horns in entrance of the strings and across the podium, which he already utilized in 2024 with the Belgrade Philharmonic.

This is a choice primarily based not a lot on historicist standards as on acoustic ones, because it balances the winds and strings with no need to change the standard variety of instrumentalists. In addition, the closeness of the winds helps Mehta to direct them higher, to which is added a well-coordinated rope by its concertmaster.

The benefits of this association have been perceived from the primary bars of the work, with an ideally expressive steadiness between the woodwind and the strings within the variations that observe the preliminary theme introduced by the horn.

The transition of andante al cheerful however not an excessive amount of It flowed naturally and broadly. It was not a really gradual model, as demonstrated by the tempo adopted within the second motion, nor was it vehement, as evidenced by the dramatic climax of that motion.

He scherzo It sounded sweeter than boisterous, however this allowed the slower tempo adopted within the trio will breathe with a sure pastoral air. and he cheerful full of life that closes the symphony was intoxicating with no need to unleash a whirlwind of untamed vitality. At the top, the Madrid viewers applauded Mehta, sitting in his wheelchair, and the maestro mentioned a “Big” goodbye with Schubert.