Zubin Mehta
One of the world's foremost conductors, Zubin Mehta, 63, is probably India's most famous immigrant to the United States of America. He is one of the world's greatest conductors whose Zoroastrian ancestors took refuge in India after the Muslim conquest of Persia more than a millennium ago. In 1958 he made his conducting debut in Vienna, won the International Conducting Competition in Liverpool and was appointed assistant conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. The range of works conducted by Mehta includes the old masters Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, the Strauss's, Bruckner and more recent composers such as Bartok or Schoenberg.
His musical career has been a long series of "firsts." He was the youngest man to conduct the Vienna Philharmonic and the Berlin Philharmonic, the youngest to become music director of a major American orchestra, the first and, so far, the only music director of the Israel Philharmonic. His debut in London, on the night of Sir Thomas Beecham's death, was the first time any person from the former dominion of India had appeared with a major British orchestra.
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