Mehli Mehta Brings Old World Sense of Elegance and Beauty, Soul of Music to Disciples

Suddenly, the music stops. It is the American Youth Symphony’s regular Saturday morning rehearsal in UCLA’s Schoenberg Hall and, at a signal from Mehli Mehta, more than 100 players break off, letting a phrase fall apart.

The maestro smiles a benignly ironic smile, swings his now-slack arms back and forth (telegraphing helpless surrender to the musicians’ lapse), then pleads urgently:

“But you are not soloists now. Therefore, you cannot play everything full out. Listen to each other. Gauge yourselves, hold back,” he adds, mopping his brow before giving another downbeat.

A few bars later, Mehta grabs his forehead in mock pain--over the woodwinds’ poor intonation--and again the music stops.

“Remember,” he says conspiratorially, bending low and toward the culprits, “you’re completely exposed (in this passage). Listen closely, get back to pitch.”

The 84-year-old director goes on like this for the next four hours--tirelessly--as he does every Saturday (and Sunday mornings, as well, on the day of performance). The atmosphere is jovial and serious in happy alternation, and the collective spirit is willing.

But it seems most abundant in the wiry little man who lunges and dives and stamps around the podium with every erg of his energy.

Tonight, Mehta, father of baton hero Zubin, opens the 28th season of his American Youth Symphony at UCLA’s Royce Hall, as the public hears the current crop of 18- to 25-year-olds who will go on, many of them, to positions in orchestras everywhere. To date, no fewer than 90 have landed such jobs.

And what unique advantage does Mehta like to think he offers these aspiring musicians?

“A link to the great symphonic age,” says the maestro, relaxing now at his Westwood home, where several oil paintings of his famous son hang. “I was there in person to hear Koussevitzky and Szell and Reiner--those conductors who were the oracles for Mozart, Brahms and Beethoven, and who actually knew the great 20th-Century composers, Stravinsky and Debussy.”

“It’s that Old World sense of elegance and beauty I give my kids,” he says, with the same animation he musters during rehearsal. “But most of all, I help them find the soul of the music, that place where its emotional resonance is the deepest.”

Mehta says that today’s major orchestra musicians--because of excessive hours logged in an ever-increasing number of rehearsals and concerts--often turn in dry, though virtuosic performances and find themselves caught up in a workaday mode.

He decries the sacrifice of quality for quantity, “the exhausting schedules that force musicians to perform like shoemakers,” and he argues that playing nine events a week, plus the traveling for extra concerts and occasional recording sessions “produces players who are overworked and therefore under-inspired.”

Committed to altering this situation and building in his disciples a solid appreciation for the art of music, Mehta, ever the clear-eyed taskmaster, tries to deflate the false notions of auditioning hopefuls.

“They come to me thinking they can be the next Heifetz,” he says, “not in search of the deep musical experience. And it’s their parents and teachers who wrongly let them think this.

“But all it leads to is heartbreak. Typically, the kids want to audition with a flashy piece by Paganini--I, then, have to ask for Bach or Mozart.

“My prescription for this disease called ‘love of self’ is chamber music. That is where they’ll find the core of music’s greatness. And its humanity, which is very much connected to the spirit of ensemble.”

Mehta learned the same, humbling lesson firsthand. In 1945, he left his post as concertmaster of the Bombay Symphony and relocated to New York for study with noted teacher Ivan Galamian--the idea being to test his violinistic mettle and, if successful, to make a career as a soloist.

“It was the heyday of great conductors and virtuosos,” he says, eyes twinkling as he reels off the legendary names. “At my best, unhappily, I was no match for Milstein and Heifetz.”

So it was back to Bombay, but this time he took over the orchestra’s podium. Then, in 1955, the two Mehta sons left for Europe, with their parents (“unable to stay separated”) following them there. When Zubin took his post with the Los Angeles Philharmonic (1962), the senior Mehta moved to Westwood. Shortly thereafter, Mehli was appointed director of the American Youth Symphony.

But even though Mehta fils has risen to celebrity status (he left the New York Philharmonic last year, having enjoyed the longest tenure in its history at that controversial helm), Mehta pere does not hold back advice:

“He used to tell me to slow down,” says Zubin, whose globe-jetting surely has set some sort of record among maestros, “and he has some legitimate complaints. But the world catches you up in its tempo. Resisting is sometimes impossible.”

Nor do Mehli’s students in the AYS take his candid comments with less than a positive attitude, if violinist Marjory Weese is any example.

“Whatever he tells us is from the heart,” she says. “And his genuine love of music is infectious and enriching--the kind of thing that makes us want to give our best. Last year, my sister turned 25 (retirement age from AYS) and cried over having to leave.”

This type of feedback on his pedagogic success is standard. While attending Zubin’s concerts in world capitals, the senior Mehta finds “former students coming up to me with words of gratitude for their orchestra training.”

But it’s only human nature to feel some limitation.

“Yes, there is one thing I regret profoundly,” the maestro admits. “That each program we prepare gets only one performance (as opposed to major orchestras, which offer multiple repeats). It’s like building a beautiful house, throwing a party there in celebration, and then never occupying it.”

That heartache never acts as a disincentive, though. Anyone seeing Mehli Mehta before his orchestra--the picture of spirited tenacity in the common goal he sets--must believe the maestro’s pledge to serve music:

“To my last breath.”

American Youth Symphony plays at 8 tonight at Royce Hall, UCLA. Free. Call (310) 825-2101.