Shortly before the global pandemic brought concert life to a halt, I experienced the unexpected pleasure of hearing Zubin Mehta conduct live. “Unexpected” because in my mind Mehta’s name had become synonymous with the well marketed schlock and awe that classical record labels in the 1990s desperately hawked. Tarnishing the well-deserved lustre his name had garnered in his earlier career were The Three Tenors circus, the awful Turandot in Beijing’s Forbidden City, and middling recordings with the Israel Philharmonic. But the octogenarian whom I watched step onto the rostrum of Disney Hall was no flim-flam man, but a genuine artist who drew from the Los Angeles Philharmonic a vitality which seems to regularly elude colleagues decades younger than he.
Impressed, I spent some time sifting through his discography in order to find further confirmation of how wrong I had been about him. And wrong I was, but sometimes my former self was also right. In the event, what I discovered were two Mehtas: scrupulous sound artist on one hand, cunning hustler chasing the bag on the other, both inhabiting the same person. While these divergent sides of his musical personality were not quite apparent in his younger days, by the time he transplanted himself from the West to the East Coast, he was already a Two-Face on the make.
Excepting the wizardry of Leopold Stokowski, who as if by osmosis could transform any ensemble into the Philadelphia Orchestra, it wasn’t until Pierre Boulez took the reins of “Murder, Inc.” in 1971 that an ensemble of ornery individuals otherwise known as the New York Philharmonic could be made to play beautifully together. Mehta, his successor, took this achievement a step further and cultivated a richly blended, solidly centered, oaken tone which the orchestra has, gratefully, preserved ever since.
Among the dwindling, but avid fanboys who care about this sort of thing, Mehta’s tenure is often regarded — especially after the energy of the Bernstein and Boulez years — as one of the duller periods in the New York Philharmonic’s history. (His programming, studded with new and contemporary works, many whose complexity are no longer welcome at David Geffen Hall, would seem to indicate otherwise.) Some blame Mehta for losing the orchestra’s decades-long contract with Columbia Records, but the fact is that irreversible economic and audience demographic changes had already led to similar situations with orchestras in Boston, Philadelphia, and Cleveland. (There also was no “loss” of anything as the orchestra would soon rebound to Teldec.) So what of Mehta’s New York discography? Much of it is actually quite good, about as consistent as his work in Los Angeles; with albums of Wagner, Strauss, and a voluptuous rendering of Schoenberg’s Gurre-Lieder among the highlights. But, perhaps, their finest collaboration on records is the Brahms cycle which they recorded across the late 1970s and early 1980s for Columbia (reissued in 2019 on compact disc by Sony Classical).
Mehta’s heady interpretations luxuriate unabashedly in the collective sonority of the New York Philharmonic, which by then had banished any memories of the “cast iron string tone” that Virgil Thomson had once infamously decried. When listening to these hefty (but never heavy), bronzen recordings, beguilingly tilted towards the mid-range and bass, one would never guess that the polished, Old World-ish orchestra under the mikes had once been a pretty scrappy band.
Try the gorgeously colored and weighted chords which open the Third Symphony, launching the first theme like a rocket across the sky. It then segues smoothly into the second subject, whose phrasing Mehta imparts just a touch of (Johann) Strauss to. Listen to the waves of autumnal gold and brown that Mehta and his New Yorkers ride aloft in their traversal of the opening movement of Brahms’ Second. Theirs is a marvel of subtly shaded colors, seamless transitions, and carefully sculpted phrasing. Everything sounds so unforced, yet evinces the care which was lavished by everyone involved. Then there are the deep hues they impart to the shifting, almost magical harmonic modulations preceding the redevelopment in the opening of the Fourth Symphony; like a twinkling nocturnal cityscape peering through a veil of fog. Perhaps most impressive of all is their traversal of the First, a work which in the wrong hands can sound blustery and tub-thumping. This interpretation, on the other hand, is anything but; sounding elegant and heroic, bold with a touch of introspection. The finale’s closing theme is here a full-throated song of joy, progressing inexorably to a brilliant coda which sweeps the listener along, without ever feeling as if one were being pressed along by the performers.
Credit also goes to Columbia for a deep and wide production that hones in on the individual felicities in Brahms’ orchestration, without ever sacrificing ensemble sound. Compared to their, frankly, ugly productions with the same orchestra during the Mitropoulos and Bernstein eras, it seemed that Columbia Records, too, had come a long way.
Around the same time in the next time zone to the west, Lorin Maazel and the Cleveland Orchestra recorded a Brahms cycle which has its own admirers for their corporate beauteousness of tone. For me, at least, their sleekness treads too close to being slick; amounting to a heap of lovely components signifying nothing greater than themselves, with Maazel’s auto-pilot direction disappointingly forecasting the much later work of his successor in “The Forest City,” Franz Welser-Möst. With Mehta there is an unforced sense of purpose, architectural line, and dramatic cogency which are missing from their rivals. To my ears, this set has few rivals and no superiors; remarkable those this may sound, there probably hasn’t been a more beautifully rendered cycle of these works since.
Brahms once wrote to a friend that in his music he strived to be beautiful when possible, but that perfection was a must always. Mehta and the New York Philharmonic eloquently demonstrate that in his four symphonies the great bearded master accomplished both these goals handily.