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| Maestro Zubin Mehta (Shai Skiff) |
In a series of concerts taking place in October 2019 and conducted by Zubin Mehta, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and its audience bid farewell to Maestro Zubin Mehta as its music director of 48 years. This writer attended a concert in the Lowy Hall of the Charles Bronfman Auditorium on October 14th 2019. Soloists were ‘cellist Mischa Maisky and pianist Rudolf Buchbinder.
Zubin Mehta (b.1935, Mumbai, India) made a chance acquaintance with Israel when he was asked to substitute for Eugene Ormandy in 1961. Following the concert’s success, the IPO invited him back in 1963, returning to substitute for Carlo Maria Giulini in 1965 for the IPO’s tour of Australia and New Zealand. “It was there that my relationship with the Orchestra solidified” explains Mehta in an interview with executive director of the IPO Foundation, Tali Gottlieb. This would be followed by many concerts of historic importance - the first IPO concert in Germany, performances at the Good Fence (1981), behind the Iron Curtain (1987), etc. In the maestro’s own words. “I am very conscious of the fact that the IPO is the cultural ambassador of the State of Israel and its representative around the world, and I identify with this special role...I must honestly say that this unique feeling is reserved in my heart for the IPO alone and it is a part of my special bond with Israel…” Contributing to the unique IPO sound has been largely the result of Mehta ‘s rigorous selection of players He has conducted over 4000 IPO concerts!
One of Maestro Mehta’s regrets has been Israeli audiences’ conservatism regarding modern music. Opening the program with Concertino for Strings by Hungarian-born composer Ödön Pártos was, therefore, a significant gesture. The first Israeli composer to receive the Israel Prize (1954), Pártos served as principal violist of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra from 1938 to 1956. A student of Kodály in the early 1920s, his music continued the Bartók-Kodály approach to folklorism, then to be re-interpreted in Israel and consequently influencing the second generation of Israeli composers and musicians. The Bartókian style pervades the Concertino for strings, its neo-Classical score, originally a string quartet from 1932, written before the composer’s immigration to Israel (then Palestine) in 1938, then to be arranged by Pártos for string orchestra in 1953. The work displays Pártos’ hands-on knowledge of the string medium. In performance that was pleasing in its articulacy, Mehta led the players through the single-movement work’s terse, uncompromising, driving ostinatos, tricky rhythms and pungent harmonies, contrasting small ensemble moments with tutti textures, as it concluded somewhat unexpectedly on a major chord.
Robert Schumann penned the Concerto for ‘cello and orchestra Op.129 in a short burst of creativity between darker phases of his emotional life. Instructing that the three movements be played without pausing, he titled the work “Konzertstück” (concert piece) rather than “Konzert” (concerto). Following extensive revisions, resulting in the finished score in 1854, the work was published the same year. However, with Schumann then confined to the sanatorium at Endenich, the ‘Cello Concerto remained unperformed. until 1860, after that, falling into virtual obscurity, only finding its place back into the concert repertoire in the early 20th century, thanks to Pablo Casals. Mischa Maisky and Maestro Mehta’s performance of the work emerged as a richly-coloured and emotional tableau, in keeping both with Maisky’s expressive manner and also with the highly-charged festive mood of the occasion. Maisky’s playing reflected his own personal connection to the work, as he addressed the shape and musical meaning of each gesture - sometimes of individual notes - with freshness and a sense of rediscovery. His warmth of sound and lush Romantic melodiousness pervaded, his daring, fine-spun pianississimo sounds making their way to all corners of the captivated Lowy Hall. Maestro Mehta and Mischa Maisky moved hand-in-glove all the way, watching, wielding an uncanny balance of well-defined sonorities between orchestral players and soloist throughout. Maisky sealed his concert farewell to Mehta with two of his signature pieces: the Prélude from Bach’s ‘Cello Suite No. 1 - playful, high-spirited and spiralling into an exciting conclusion - and the Sarabande from ‘Cello Suite No.5 - its mysterious musical agenda carefully spelled out with profound introspection.
The program concluded with L.van Beethoven’s Concerto No. 5 for piano and orchestra Op.73 in E flat major, “Emperor”, with legendary Austrian Rudolf Buchbinder as soloist. Much has been written about Beethoven’s fifth and last piano concerto and its background. With Napoleon’s army occupying Vienna in 1809, Beethoven wrote to his publisher Gottfried Christoph Hartel in Leipzig on July 26th, “The course of events has attacked me, body and soul… What a destructive, disorderly life I see and hear around me…and human misery in every form.” It was within this chaotic situation that Beethoven worked on the concerto. Much has been written about Beethoven’s fifth and last piano concerto and its background. Musicologist Alfred Einstein wrote an interesting study on "Beethoven's Military Style," a style considered present in most of Beethoven's concertos. But Buchbinder has much more to say about the work. From the very first notes of its extraordinary opening, in which a brilliant (notated) piano cadenza is punctuated by orchestral chords, he presents its many aspects. Beethoven’s writing is more brilliant here than in any of the earlier concertos; the opening Allegro’s development, for example, abounds in virtuosic 16th-note passages in both hands simultaneously, dashing octave runs, and expressive melodic motifs, often in very close succession. Influenced by bellicose annotations found in Beethoven’s sketches of the work ("victory", “combat", "attack"...) one hears so many of today's pianists hammering out the concerto in a show of muscular energy. With his quintessential, meticulous fingerwork, taste and control, Buchbinder, however, offers colour, shape and grandeur to the work’s intense textures and filigree fragility to its cantabile moments (fashioned with so many elegant trills), conversing with the orchestra, at times accompanying it and engaging in dialogue with instruments, the last instance of which being the eerie penultimate moment of the concerto, with its suspenseful duo between solo piano and the solo timpani. Particularly identified with Austro-Germanic Classical and Romantic composers, Buchbinder has remained especially loyal to Beethoven, publishing “Mein Beethoven - Leben mit dem Meister”.in 2014. Zubin Mehta considers himself a Viennese-style conductor, with 80 percent of his repertoire made up of what might be referred to as the Viennese classics – from Haydn to Schoenberg. His and Buchbinder’s intuition and long association shone through each gesture of this memorable performance.
The opening of the IPO's 84th season marked the end of an era. The audience showed its deep respect and appreciation for the many years of friendship, dedication and astute musicianship Maestro Zubin Mehta has devoted to the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the excellence of Israeli musical performance and to its audiences.
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| Rudolf Buchbinder,Zubin Mehta,Mischa Maisky (Timeline Photos) |
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