Word: mehtas
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...Toronto Symphony's Seiji Ozawa, 32, a Japanese and the only Oriental besides Mehta to flourish on Western podiums, is no less a dynamic charmer than Mehta. A favorite of young people, he sports a Beatle hairdo and a free-swinging style in the manner of Leonard Bernstein. Sometimes he indulges his expressive stick technique to paint panels of sheer sound, but he can also propel vibrant, vivacious performances as notable for their substance as for their sheen...
Untamed Animal. But in music as in life, Mehta does not let occasional ragged spots bother him as long as his general progress remains as continuous and soaring as a Richard Strauss melody. The analogy is his own: he responds with special keenness to Strauss's music...
Half in the Eyes. Mehta's beat is, by his own description, "at times as clear as possible, and at times as unclear as possible-sometimes I conduct so my orchestra will listen to each other." Clear or unclear, it somehow communicates. Philadelphia Orchestra Bassoonist Bernard Garfield credits Mehta with "the ability to put himself into the music in a very, very intense way and to tell the musicians a great deal about how he wants it played." Says the Israel Philharmonic's chief concertmaster, Zvi Haftel: "He is more than just a gifted conductor. To change from...
Like many of his contemporaries on the podium, Mehta nearly always conducts without a score ("Half of our trade is in the eyes"), relying on a fantastic capacity to ingest compositions in a few readings and hold them in his well-stocked memory. During his years with the Montreal orchestra he had to memorize practically an entire new program every week, often while en route between engagements. One of the solutions he worked out was to conduct staging rehearsals of an operatic score while studying an orchestral score that was placed on the floor next to him. This learn...
...Finally, Mehta crashed into the broad, exuberant themes of Ein Heldenleben (A Hero's Life). Looking up with a smile that radiated at once pride, self-mockery and unabashed immodesty, he proclaimed: "I'm quite a lot of a hero...