“Bruno Walter said to me: don’t be shy, play Mahler in a vulgar way.”

Do you remember the first time you heard the music of Gustav Mahler?

Mehta: That was in Bombay. It was a recording of the Symphony No. 4 conducted by Bruno Walter, and the singer was Desi Halban. As a young person, perhaps this was a good start, because the Symphony No. 4 looks at the world through the eyes of a child. I was not a child, I was a teenager, but the music was immediately accessible. Of course my father had already been to New York for four or five years and had heard, not so much Mahler, but a little of it: Mitropoulos with the New York Philharmonic; Lenny [Bernstein] had not quite started as yet. So my father’s connection with Mahler was not as great as with other classical composers. Also, my father was a man who was a great chamber musician, and there was no Mahler chamber music in that sense. So what we had was a recording of Bruno Walter, and then of course the first live performance in Vienna. In my early life, everything was in Vienna, everything [laughs]: my first opera, my first symphony, the first orchestra that I heard live was the Vienna Philharmonic, which is not bad. I didn’t hear a second-class orchestra in a province and then come to Vienna later, I didn’t have that transition. The Vienna Philharmonic was the first orchestra I heard in my life, and it is still the first orchestra in my life; this tradition, this sound, this conglomeration of chamber musicians. I have tried to imitate it in other countries where I have been a music director, but here is where I learnt it all, that’s my point.

(more…)