Zubin Mehta, 2007)

Zubin Mehta (ज़ुबिन मेहता); pronounced [ˈzuːbɪn ˈmeːɦt̪aː] (born 29 April 1936) is an Indian conductor of western classical music. He is the Music Director for Life of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.

Biography[link]

Zubin Mehta was born into a Parsi family in Bombay, British India, the son of Mehli and Tehmina Mehta. His father Mehli Mehta was a violinist and founding conductor of the Bombay Symphony Orchestra. Mehta is an alumnus of St. Mary's School, Mumbai, and St. Xavier's College, Mumbai. Mehta initially intended to study medicine, but eventually became a music student in Vienna at the age of 18, under Hans Swarowsky. Also at the same academy along with Mehta were conductor Claudio Abbado and conductor–pianist Daniel Barenboim.

Mehta's first marriage was to Canadian soprano Carmen Lasky in 1958. They have a son, Mervon and a daughter, Zarina. In 1964, they divorced.^[1] Two years after the divorce, Carmen married Zubin's brother, Zarin Mehta, now the Executive Director of the New York Philharmonic. In July 1969, Mehta married Nancy Kovack, a former American film and television actress.^[2] Mehta is a permanent resident of the United States, but retains his Indian citizenship.

Conducting career[link]

Zubin Mehta conducting the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in Mumbai, October 2008

In 1958, Mehta made his conducting debut in Vienna. The same year he won the International Conducting Competition in Liverpool and was appointed assistant conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. Mehta soon rose to the rank of chief conductor when he was made Music Director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra in 1960, a post he held until 1967. In 1961, he was named assistant conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic; however, the orchestra's music director designate, Georg Solti, was not consulted on the appointment, and Solti subsequently resigned in protest;^[3] soon after, Mehta himself was named Music Director of the orchestra, and held the post from 1962 to 1978.

In 1978 Mehta became the Music Director and Principal Conductor of the New York Philharmonic and remained there until his resignation in 1991, becoming the longest holder of the post.

The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO) appointed Mehta its Music Advisor in 1969, Music Director in 1977, and made him its Music Director for Life in 1981.^[4]

Since 1985, Mehta has been chief conductor of the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in Florence. Additionally, from 1998 until 2006, Mehta was Music Director of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. The Munich Philharmonic named him its Honorary Conductor. Since 2005, Mehta has been the main conductor (together with Lorin Maazel) of the Palau de les Arts, the new opera house of the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències, in Valencia, Spain.

Mehta conducted the Vienna New Year's Concert in the years 1990, 1995, 1998 and 2007. He has also made a recording of Indian instrumentalist Ravi Shankar's Sitar Concerto No. 2, with Shankar and the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

1990s[link]

In 1990, he conducted the Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and the Orchestra del Teatro dell'Opera di Roma in the first ever Three Tenors concert in Rome, joining the tenors again in 1994 at the Dodger Stadium, Los Angeles. In between those appearances he conducted the historic 1992 production of Tosca in which each act took place in the actual setting and at the actual time specified in the score. This production starred Catherine Malfitano in the title role, Plácido Domingo as Cavaradossi and Ruggero Raimondi as Baron Scarpia. Act I was telecast live from Rome's basilica of Sant'Andrea della Valle on Saturday, 11 July, at noon (Central European Daylight Savings Time); act II was telecast later that evening from the Palazzo Farnese at 9:40 p.m.; act III was telecast live on Sunday, 12 July, at 7:00 am from the Castel Sant'Angelo, also known as Hadrian's Tomb.

In June 1994, Mehta performed the Mozart Requiem, along with the members of the Sarajevo Symphony Orchestra and Chorus at the ruins of Sarajevo's National Library, in a fund raising concert for the victims of armed conflict and remembrance of the thousands of people killed in the Yugoslav wars. On 29 August 1999, he conducted Mahler Symphony No. 2 (Resurrection), at the vicinity of Buchenwald concentration camp in the German city of Weimar, with both the Bavarian State Orchestra and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, sitting alongside each other. He toured his native country India and home city Mumbai (Bombay) in 1984, with the New York Philharmonic, and again in November–December 1994, with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, along with soloists Itzhak Perlman and Gil Shaham. In 1997 and 1998, Mehta worked in collaboration with Chinese film director Zhang Yimou on a production of the opera Turandot by Giacomo Puccini which they took to Florence, Italy, and then to Beijing, China, where it was staged, in its actual surroundings, in the Forbidden City with over 300 extras and 300 soldiers. for nine historic performances. The making of this production was chronicled in a documentary called The Turandot Project which Mehta narrated.

2000s[link]

Zubin Mehta, 2010

On 29 November 2005 Mehta appeared with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra performing Bruckner's Symphony No. 8. On 26 December 2005, the first anniversary of the Indian Ocean Tsunami, Mehta and the Bavarian State Orchestra performed for the first time in Chennai (formerly called Madras) at the Madras Music Academy. This tsunami memorial concert was organised by the Madras German consulate along with the Max-Mueller Bhavan/Goethe-Institut. 2006 was his last year with the Bavarian State Orchestra.

Performance style[link]

Mehta received praise early in his career for dynamic interpretations of the large scale symphonic music of Anton Bruckner, Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler and Franz Schmidt. His conducting is renowned as being flamboyant, vigorous and forceful.

Honors and awards[link]

Mehta at a ceremony to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in March 2011

Mehta's name is mentioned in the song "Billy the Mountain" on the 1972 album Just Another Band from L.A. by Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention.

At the Israel Prize ceremony in 1991, Mehta was awarded a special prize in recognition of his unique devotion to Israel and to the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.

In 1995, Laureate of the Wolf Prize in Arts.

In 1999, Mehta was presented the "Lifetime Achievement Peace and Tolerance Award" of the United Nations.

The Government of India honoured Mehta in 1966 with the Padma Bhushan and in 2001 with India's second highest civilian award, the Padma Vibhushan.^[5]

In 2005, he was voted the 117th-greatest Israeli of all time, in a poll by the Israeli news website Ynet to determine whom the general public considered the 200 Greatest Israelis.^[6]

In September 2006 the Kennedy Center announced Mehta as one of the recipients of that year's Kennedy Center Honors, presented on 2 December 2006.

On 3 February 2007, Mehta was the recipient of the Second Annual Bridgebuilder Award at Loyola Marymount University.

In 2007 he received the prestigious Dan David Prize.

Conductor Karl Böhm awarded Mehta the Nikisch Ring – the Vienna Philharmonic Ring of Honor.

Mehta is an honorary citizen of Florence and Tel Aviv. He was made an honorary member of the Vienna State Opera in 1997. In 2001 he was bestowed the title of "Honorary Conductor" of the Vienna Philharmonic and in 2004 the Munich Philharmonic awarded him the same title, as did the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in 2006. At the end of his tenure with the Bavarian State Opera he was named Honorary Conductor of the Bavarian State Orchestra and Honorary Member of the Bavarian State Opera, and the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Wien, appointed him honorary member in November 2007.

In October 2008, Mehta received the Praemium Imperiale (World Culture Prize in Memory of His Imperial Highness Prince Takamatsu), Japan.

On 1 March 2011, Mehta received the 2,434th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

On 2 October 2011 he received the Echo Klassik in Berlin, for his life's work.^[7]

Films[link]

Mehta's life has been documented in Terry Sanders' film Portrait of Zubin Mehta. A documentary film about Mehta, Zubin and I, was produced by the grandson of an Israeli harpist who played with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra before Mehta assumed the helm. The filmmaker joins the orchestra on a tour of Mumbai and meets with him for two interviews, in India and Tel Aviv.^[8]

In Christopher Nupen's 1969 documentary The Trout about a performance of Schubert's Trout Quintet in London by Jacqueline du Pré, Daniel Barenboim, Pinchas Zukerman and Itzhak Perlman, Mehta plays the double bass.^[9]

Educational projects[link]

In 2009, Mehta established Mifneh (Hebrew for "change"), a music education program for Israeli Arabs, in cooperation with Bank Leumi and the Arab-Israel Bank. Three schools, in Shfaram, the Jezreel Valley and Nazareth, are taking part in the pilot project.^[10]

He and his brother Zarin constitute the Advisor Council of the Mehli Mehta Foundation.^[11]

See also[link]

• List of Israel Prize recipients

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Martin Bookspan and Ross Yockey, Zubin: The Zubin Mehta Story
• Renate von Matuschka, Die Partitur meines Lebens.

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Zubin Mehta

• Official website
• Zubin Mehta at Allmusic
• Zubin Mehta at the Internet Movie Database
• Dan David Prize laureate 2007

This biographical article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (November 2011)

Pinchas Zukerman (Hebrew: פנחס צוקרמן‎, born July 16, 1948) is a violinist, violist, and conductor of Israeli descent. He is considered to be one of the world's preeminent violinists of the 20th and 21st centuries, and his ongoing 45-year career has seen him perform with the world's best-known orchestras and record over 100 works.

Born in Tel Aviv to Yehuda and Miriam Lieberman Zukerman, Zukerman began his musical studies at age 4, on the recorder. His father then taught him clarinet, and picked up the violin at age 8. Isaac Stern and Pablo Casals learned of Zukerman's violin talent during a 1962 visit to Israel. Zukerman subsequently moved to the United States that year for study at the Juilliard School,^[1] under the tutelage of Stern and Ivan Galamian. He made his New York début in 1963. In 1967, he shared the Leventritt Prize with the Korean violinist Kyung-wha Chung. His 1969 debut recordings of the concerti by Tchaikovsky (under the direction of Antal Dorati, with the London Symphony Orchestra) and Mendelssohn (with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic) launched a successful recording career that continues to the present day and boasts over 110 releases.

Zukerman launched his conducting career in 1970 with the English Chamber Orchestra, and served as director of London's South Bank Festival from 1971 to 1974. In the USA, Zukerman was music director of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra from 1980 to 1987. He later directed the summer festivals of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra (1991–1995) and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (1996–1999). In 1999,^[2] he became Music Director of Ottawa's National Arts Centre Orchestra (NACO). In March 2012, the NACO announced the scheduled conclusion of his music directorship in 2015.^[3] He has served as Principal Guest Conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra since 2009.

Zukerman is on the faculty at the Manhattan School of Music and is the head and founder of the Zukerman Performance Program at the school. His former students have included Koh Gabriel Kameda, Julian Rachlin, and Guy Braunstein. In 1999 he founded the National Arts Centre Young Artists Programme, which counts young musicians such as Viviane Hagner, Jessica Linnebach, Antal Szalai, and Caitlin Tully as alumni. In 2006 Zukerman began his involvement in the Rolex Artistic Mentorship programme.

Zukerman plays the "Dushkin" Guarnerius del Gesù violin of 1742. His honours include the King Solomon Award, the National Medal of Arts (presented by President Reagan in 1983), the Isaac Stern Award for Artistic Excellence, and an honorary doctorate from Brown University. His recordings have received 21 Grammy nominations, and 2 Grammy wins. He has collaborated with filmmaker Christopher Nupen on several projects, and was the subject of Nupen's "Pinchas Zukerman: Here to Make Music" documentary of 1974. In 2003 he founded a string quintet, the Zukerman Chamber Players, which has released 3 CD recordings in addition to its roster of live performances.

Zukerman has been married three times. His first marriage was to the flutist and novelist Eugenia Zukerman, from 1968 to 1985. The marriage produced two daughters, Arianna and Natalia, who are now both musicians. Arianna Zukerman is a classical soprano, while Natalia Zukerman is a folk singer and guitarist. Zukerman's second marriage was to actress Tuesday Weld from 1985 to 1998. Both marriages ended in divorce. Zukerman and his third wife, Amanda Forsyth, the NACO's principal cellist, live in the Rockcliffe Park area of Ottawa.

References[link]

Sources[link]

• Boris Schwarz: Great Masters of the Violin. From Corelli and Vivaldi to Stern, Zukerman and Perlman. Simon and Schuster, New York 1983.
• Darryl Lyman: Great Jews in Music. J. D. Publishers, Middle Village, NY 1986.
• Stanley Sadie, H. Wiley Hitchcock (Ed.): The new Grove dictionary of American music. Grove's Dictionaries of Music, New York, N.Y 1986.
• Kurtz Myers: Index to record reviews 1984-1987. G.K. Hall, Boston, Ma. 1989.
• Alan Rich: Masters of Music: Great artists of work. Preface by Nicolas Slonimsky, foreword by Isaac Stern, photographs by James Arkatov. Capra Press, Santa Barbara, Ca. 1990.

External links[link]

• Pinchas Zukerman on Charlie Rose
• Pinchas Zukerman at the Internet Movie Database
• Works by or about Pinchas Zukerman in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Pinchas Zukerman collected news and commentary at The New York Times
• Profile at New York Philharmonic
• Profile at Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra

Viviane Hagner is an internationally renowned violinist. She was born in Munich, Germany in 1977, to a German father and Korean mother.

Hagner made her international debut at the age of 12, and one year later performed as soloist at the historic "Joint Concert" in Tel Aviv with the Berlin and Israel Philharmonic Orchestras, under the baton of Zubin Mehta. Since her debut, Hagner has been a regular soloist with leading orchestras including the Berlin Philharmonic, Staatskapelle Berlin, Chicago Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Montreal Symphony, and BBC Symphony, working with top conductors including Daniel Barenboim, Kent Nagano, Claudio Abbado, Zubin Mehta, Vladimir Ashkenazy, and Pinchas Zukerman.

She is also a regular performer of chamber music, and has appeared at festivals including Ravinia, Marlboro, Schleswig-Holstein, and Salzburg, partnering with other musicians including Yo-Yo Ma, Pinchas Zukerman, Yuri Bashmet, Julia Fischer, and her sister, pianist Nicole Hagner.

Hagner has performed the world premieres of two violin concertos: Unsuk Chin's violin concerto, in 2002 with the Deutsches Sinfonie-Orchester and Kent Nagano, and Simon Holt's violin concerto, in 2006 with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Jonathan Nott.

She plays the Sasserno Stradivarius, made in 1717.

Hagner's recordings include chamber works by Beethoven, Schubert, and Saint-Saëns (EMI Classics), the violin concerti by Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn, while her 2006 album, Ciaconna (Altara), includes Bach's Partita No. 2, Bartók's Sonata for Solo Violin, and Hartmann's Suite for Solo Violin. In May 2010 her recording of Vieuxtemps' 4th and 5th violin concerti, as well as his Fantasia Appassionata, was released by Hyperion, and features Martyn Brabbins and the Royal Flemish Philharmonic.

She won the Young Concert Artists International Auditions in 2000 and a Borletti Buitoni Trust Award in 2004.

References[link]

• BBC Review "played with real understanding ... Hagner’s intelligence and musicality"
• Viviane Hagner's website

External links[link]

• Hear Viviane Hagner in concert from WGBH Boston

Moser playing the Dvorak Cello Concerto at the New World Center in 2011.

Johannes Moser (born 1979) is a German-Canadian cellist who has performed with many of the world's leading orchestras.

External links[link]

• IMG Artists
• Official Website

This article on an individual musician is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

Daniil Trifonov (Russian: Даниил Трифонов, born March 5, 1991 in Nizhny Novgorod) is a Russian concert pianist.

Biography[link]

Trifonov is a top prize winner of several major international piano competitions, including the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, and the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. At the age of 21, he is quickly emerging as one of the most outstanding pianists of his generation, having the potential to build a major international performing career.

At 17, he won Fifth Prize at the 4th International Scriabin Competition in Moscow, and the first prize at the 3rd International Piano Competition of San Marino,where he also received the Special Prize for the best performance of Chick Corea’s composition.^[1]

In 2010, Trifonov became a medalist of the distinguished XVI International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, where he won Third Prize and the Special Prize of Polish Radio for the best mazurkas performance.^[2]

In 2011, Trifonov won the First Prize at the 13th Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition in Tel-Aviv, winning also the Pnina Salzman Prize for the Best Performer of a Chopin piece, the Prize for the Best Performer of Chamber Music and the Audience Favorite Prize .^[3]

A few weeks after winning the Rubinstein Competition, Trifonov was awarded the First Prize, Gold Medal, and Grand Prix at the XIV International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. Trifonov also won the Audience Award and the Award for the Best Performance of a Chamber Concerto. ^[4]

He recently completed studies at the Gnessin Special School of Music in the class of Tatiana Zelikman, and is currently a student of Sergei Babayan at the Cleveland Institute of Music.

Other scholarships and awards received include the Yuri Rozum International Charity Foundation Scholarship, the Scriabin Scholarship, the “New Names” Scholarship, the “Young Talents of Russia” Foundation Scholarship and the Guzik Foundation Award.

Trifonov has performed around the world, including Austria, Canada, China, Germany, Italy, Israel, Japan, Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the USA.

Orchestras with which he has performed include the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, Russian National Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Vienna Philharmonic, Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi, Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Israel Camerata Orchestra, Israel Sinfonietta Beersheva, Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Sinfonia Varsovia, Poznan Philharmonic Orchestra, Sinfonietta de Lausanne, Republic of San Marino Symphony Orchestra, Moscow Chamber Orchestra, Siberian Symphony Orchestra, Nizhniy Novgorod Philharmonic Orchestra, Yaroslavl Philharmonic Orchestra, and the “Musica Viva” Chamber Orchestra.

Trifonov has also participated in numerous music festivals, including Rheingau Musik Festival (Germany), Easter Festival, Crescendo (Russia), Arpeggione (Austria), Musica in Villa (Italy), Dame Myra Hess Series (USA), the Round Top Festival Institute (USA), International Keyboard Institute & Festival (USA), Santo Stefano (Italy), Rimini Meeting (Italy), Brighton Festival (UK), Wiener Festwochen (Vienna Festival, Austria), and “Trio di Trieste” Piano Festival (Italy), International Music Festival “Chopin and his Europe” (Poland), International Chopin Piano Festival in Duszniki Zdroj (Poland).

Trifonov played his Carnegie Hall debut in May 2009, and has also performed at other prestigious concert venues like the Auditorium di Milano (Milan, Italy),Teatro la Fenice (Venice, Italy), Warsaw Philharmonic Hall, Barbican Hall and Wigmore Hall (London, UK), as well as the Rathausplatz in Vienna's Town Hall Square,^[5] where he was awarded Third Prize representing Russia in the Eurovision Young Musicians Competition 2010. In addition to developing an important performing career, Daniil Trifonov is also active as a composer of piano, chamber and orchestral music.

His first CD^[6] was released on Decca in 2011, featuring a selection of Chopin solo piano works. He has also made a number of television recordings in Russia, Poland, Japan, the USA and Italy.

Martha Argerich about Daniil Trifonov (Financial Times): “Last night I listened to him again on YouTube – he has everything and more. What he does with his hands is technically incredible. It’s also his touch – he has tenderness and also the demonic element. I never heard anything like that.”^[7]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Facebook Fan Page
• Official website(English)
• Official blog(English)
• Official website (Russian)
• Artist detail - Studiomusica
• Artist detail - Opus3 Artists
• Artist detail - Intermusica