Mehta will take over the post from 2017.
By Raif Karerat
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Internationally renowned Indian composer Zubin Mehta has been named the new honorific chairman of the George Enescu International Music Festival in Romania.
Mehta will take over the post in 2017 from Romanian-born musician Ioan Holender, who directed the Vienna State Opera from 1992 to 2010, reported the Associated Press. Holender is also the festival’s artistic director.
Enescu, who died in 1955, was a Romanian composer, violinist and conductor who moved to Paris when the communists came to power. The festival always begins and ends with his compositions.
Organizers quoted Mehta as saying Wednesday: “I can hardly wait to return to Romania. You have the most beautiful festival in the world.”
Mehta was born in 1936 in Bombay and received his first musical education under his father Mehli Mehta’s guidance who was a noted concert violinist and the founder of the Bombay Symphony Orchestra, according to his official website.
He was Music Director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra from 1961 to 1967 and also assumed the Music Directorship of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra in 1962, a post he retained until 1978. In 1969 Mehta was appointed Music Adviser to the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and was made Music Director of that orchestra in 1977. In 1981 the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra awarded him the title of Music Director for life.
Mehta became the Music Director and Principal Conductor of the New York Philharmonic in 1978, and remained there until his resignation in 1991, becoming the longest holder of the post.
Together with his brother Zarin he is a co-chairman of the Mehli Mehta Music Foundation in Bombay where more than 200 children are educated in Western Classical Music. He also helped found the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music in Tel Aviv. The school develops young talent in Israel and is closely related to the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, as is a new project of teaching young Arab Israelis in the cities of Shwaram and Nazareth with local teachers and members of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.
Mehta’s international awards and honors, as listed on his website:
… Mehta’s list of awards and honours is extensive and includes the “Nikisch-Ring” bequeathed to him by Karl Böhm. He is an honorary citizen of both Florence and Tel Aviv and was made an honorary member of the Vienna State Opera in 1997, of the Bavarian State Opera in 2006 and of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde Wien in 2007. The title of “Honorary Conductor” was bestowed to him by the following orchestras: Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra (2001), Munich Philharmonic Orchestra (2004), Los Angeles Philharmonic (2006), Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino (2006), Staatskapelle Berlin (2014) and Bavarian State Orchestra (2006), with whom he performed in Srinagar, Kashmir in September 2013.
In October 2008 Zubin Mehta was honored by the Japanese Imperial Family with the “Praemium Imperiale”. In March 2011 Zubin Mehta received a special distinction, in getting a star on the Hollywood Boulevard. The Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany was bestowed to him in July 2012. The Indian Government honored him in September 2013 with the “Tagore Award for cultural harmony” which a year earlier was awarded to Ravi Shankar.