Mehta and Midori perform Brahms and Hindemith

To celebrate her 30th stage jubilee acclaimed Japanese violinist Midori chose a very special partner, conductor Zubin Mehta, who also conducted her concert debut with the New York Philharmonic in 1983 when she was eleven years old. In this concert with the Münchner Philharmoniker she performs a milestone of violin literature: BRAHMS’ Violin Concerto in D major. The concert is accompanied by Brahms’ Tragic Overture and Hindemith’s symphony “Mathis der Maler”. HINDEMITH, once the “bad boy” of the German music scene (New York Musical Courier) composed the symphony – using melodies from his opera of the same name – in commission for Wilhelm Furtwängler and the Berliner Philharmoniker in 1934. Its first performance was a huge success but also caused a hate campaign that made Hindemith emigrate from Germany.

Daniel Barenboim – 70th Birthday Concert

Performing the solo parts of two of the great piano concertos in the concert repertoire – BEETHOVEN’s Piano Concerto no. 3 and TCHAIKOVSKY’s Piano Concerto no. 1 – in one sitting is a feat that few pianists can pull off apart from Daniel Barenboim. Pianist, conductor and chamber musician extraordinaire, Daniel Barenboim hands over the reins of “his” orchestra, the Staatskapelle Berlin, to his close friend and colleague Zubin Mehta. To honor his friend the composer Elliott CARTER, who passed away at the age of 103, Barenboim performs a work written especially for him by Carter. —– Program: BEETHOVEN: Piano Concerto No. 3; ELIOTT CARTER: Dialogues II for piano and orchestra; TCHAIKOVSKY: Piano Concerto No. 1

Zubin Mehta conducts Pierrot Lunaire

Arnold Schönberg was one of the most influential artists of the 20th century and the “father” of musical Modernism. “Brilliant idea, just my kind of thing,” he noted in his diary, after hearing of the actress Albertine Zehme’s plans to set poems from Albert Giraud’s Pierrot lunaire to music. Each of the 21 miniatures has its own sound colour by the instruments employed: flute, clarinet, piano, violin and cello. Under the among them Mojca Erdmann, Daniel and Michael Barenboim, perform in the concentrated studio-like atmosphere of the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin.

Un ballo in maschera

Ten years after stepping down as music director of the Bavarian State Opera, Zubin Mehta returned to Munich in March 2016 to celebrate his 80th birthday conducting Verdi’s masterpiece for the first time in a staged production. His cast features some of today’s finest Verdi singers: soprano Anja Harteros, singing Amelia for the first time and “filling every note with Verdian intensity”, tenor Piotr Beczala as a “visually and vocally dashing Riccardo” and George Petean as an “exemplary” Renato (Neue Musikzeitung). In director Johannes Erath’s musically super-sensitive new production, this historically-based tale of illicit love, conspiracy and betrayal unfolds in a surrealistic, shadowy setting transformed by lighting and projections. Special praise was showered by the enthusiastic critics on Maestro Mehta, who “creates concentrated musical connections (…) Musically the performance was a dream” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung).

Wiener Philharmoniker, Zubin Mehta & Martha Argerich

Zubin Mehta and Martha Argerich return with Schumann’s only piano concerto and Bruckner’s fourth symphony in an exclusive Subscription Series concert to the Golden Hall of the Musikverein in Vienna – the city where both received important impulses for their musical education in the 1950s. More than half a century later, the Indian conductor and the Argentinean pianist are among those artistic personalities who have succeeded in leaving a lasting mark on the fast-moving classical music world. Their artistic achievements represent a piece of cultural memory of the 20th and 21st centuries and are still impressively alive. “The Power of true Old Masters – Martha Argerich sat at the piano

as spiritedly sparkling as ever. Just as Bruckner’s Fourth subsequently succeeded in becoming a magnificent dialogue between orchestra and conductor: Bruckner impulsive, intimate, poignant, stirring.” (Kronen Zeitung)