Tehmina Mehta, 96; Matriarch of Leading Classical Music Family

Tehmina Mehta, the matriarch described as the quiet strength of a classical music family that encompassed her late husband, Mehli, and sons Zubin and Zarin Mehta, has died. She was 96.

Mehta died Friday in Los Angeles of natural causes.

Known as “Tehmi” to the international music community and to her friends, Mehta in 1984 received the Mother of the Year award from the Helping Hand of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

“Very quietly, she was the strength in the family,” Olive Behrendt, then vice chairwoman of the Los Angeles Philharmonic board, told The Times when the award was announced. “She’s always giving credit to others, but it’s Tehmi who makes most things possible.... She is the definitive mother.”

Mehta had lived in Los Angeles since 1964, when her husband, violinist and conductor Mehli Mehta, became head of UCLA’s orchestra department. He taught at UCLA until 1976 and headed the American Youth Symphony, consisting of Southern California university students, from 1964 until 1998. He died in 2002.

As a loyal helpmate, Tehmina Mehta copied her husband’s orchestral arrangements, typed his corre- spondence, saw that his clothes were in order and prepared meals at all hours to fit his concert schedule.

The couple’s two sons both forged careers in music. Zubin Mehta, former music director of the Los Angeles and New York philharmonics, is music director for life of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and general music director of the Bavarian State Opera. Zarin Mehta, whom his mother always joked “can’t even read music,” became an accountant and is the executive director of the New York Philharmonic.

Born in Poona, India, about 120 miles from Bombay, Tehmina Mehta began studying piano at the age of 9.

At 19, she met her husband when she accompanied the violinist in a charity concert in Bombay.

They married eight years later, after Mehli Mehta worked in an income tax office until he could support her.

Surrounded by music, she rejected the idea that she might have become a professional pianist.

“I come from an old-fashioned family. I don’t think my father ever would have allowed it,” she told The Times in 1984. “I was not that great a pianist. I was just ordinary. I could accompany my husband in certain easy sonatas.”

Traditional she was -- with her own touches. She wore saris throughout her life, but added Chanel shoes. She kept a proper supply of Indian spices, which she added to hamburgers.

She sought her husband’s permission to learn to drive, and acceded when he said no -- but forever referred to the denial as “my one sore spot.”

“I think the family should come first,” she told The Times. “If you put yourself first, then don’t have children.”

Her late husband perhaps offered the greatest assessment of Tehmina Mehta when he told The Times in 1984: “Though her body is frail, her mind is stronger than all of us put together. She’s the center of our family and the one person who holds it all together.”

Mehta is survived by her two sons, four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.