Mehli Mehta to Lay Down His Baton

Violinist-conductor Mehli Mehta first provided the musical world with two talented sons--conductor Zubin and Zubin’s younger brother, Zarin, executive director of the Ravinia Festival in Chicago. And then, for more than 30 years, Mehta pere has also been the father figure guiding the proto-professional players of Southern California’s premier training orchestra, the American Youth Symphony.

As music director of the ensemble, formed in the early ‘60s, he has inspired, goaded and molded successive generations of aspiring musicians, helping to provide them with the polish they need to fill chairs in orchestras around the world--right now, Mehta proudly points out, 15 youth symphony alums are among the members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and a number of others hold similar posts in cities on both coasts and in mid-America.

But now, at 88, Mehta has decided that the next 18 months will mark his final season-and-a-half as youth symphony music director. Slowed down by heart attacks in 1995 and 1996, he has been ordered by doctors not to conduct the orchestra for long periods during its annual, fall-to-spring season.

A fortnight ago, after two seasons of auditioning candidates for the post, Mehta and the board of directors agreed on his successor, the Russian-born violinist-conductor Alexander Treger, a longtime member and concertmaster of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and a music educator at UCLA and at Crossroads School in Santa Monica. Treger will take over in the fall of 1998.

“It’s time to turn over the reins,” Mehta says cheerily, “and Alex--a musical friend I have known and admired for many years--is the right one for the job.”

Not that Mehta is putting down his baton altogether. Next Sunday night, he returns to the American Youth Symphony podium for the first time in six months to lead the orchestra’s midseason showcase, the gala fund-raising concert held annually at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Mehta says he also plans--”God willing”--to conduct the remainder of the season, three concerts at the Veterans Wadsworth Theater in Brentwood, and all of the ‘97-98 season.

In a conversation last week at the American Youth Symphony office in Brentwood, Mehta and Treger were a study in contrasts--Mehta characteristically impassioned and exaggerated, the 48-year-old Treger more thoughtful and measured. But they agreed that it takes more than just virtuosic skills to make successful musicians out of the talented young people in the AYS orchestra.

“To become a good musician, not just a good soloist, you must play chamber music, you must play in an orchestra,” Mehta said in his emphatic way.

Treger added, “It’s an interesting thing: After one joins an orchestra, the first thing that person looks for is opportunities to play chamber music outside the symphonic concerts. That’s because, to get better, to play better, everyone has to stretch. After all, this is going to be your life.”

Mehta jumped in: “That’s what I tell them: This is going to be your life. Put some time in on it. Prepare yourselves.” More reflectively, he adds, “Then, watching them come up, watching them develop--that’s my happiness.”

Even so, he pointed out, the lessons don’t always take. The youngest crop of musical wannabes, Mehta groused, sometimes seem to “take everything for granted, and don’t want to practice.”

“Well, yes and no,” Treger answered. “When they see what it is going to take [in terms of work and patience], some of the young people become more realistic and actually work harder.”

Like Mehta, whose career began as a soloist and chamber player in his native Bombay, India, and moved later to Philadelphia and London, Treger comes to the American Youth Symphony after a lifetime of being a violinist. And, though he is doing more conducting now than ever before, the former student of the legendary David Oistrakh says he’ll “never stop playing the violin.”

As for Mehta, he feels the same way about conducting. When the youth symphony moves back into its home of four decades, UCLA’s shuttered and earthquake-damaged Royce Hall, he hopes to conduct the gala return concert, no matter his official status with the orchestra.

Treger agrees wholeheartedly: “Of course he should conduct that concert--and any others he wants. This is his orchestra. After I become music director, Mehli will be welcome to conduct, any time.”

That prospect obviously pleases the elder musician, who acknowledges, “I always want to make music. If I couldn’t make music, I’d wither away.”