"Zubi Baby" Switches

"A lot of us think, why not send our worst enemy to the New York Philharmonic and finish him off once and for all." Conductor Zubin Mehta claimed that his remarks were distorted in 1967, but he was really only repeating the standard opinion of the Philharmonic as a band of hard-boiled musicians who, if so inclined, could walk all over any conductor. Mehta, music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, soon found himself at the headquarters of Local 802, the New York branch of the American Federation of Musicians, making a full-dress apology.

Last week the New York Philharmonic announced that, starting in 1978, Bombay-born Mehta, 39, would be sending himself willingly to New York to become the orchestra's music director. He succeeds French Composer-Conductor Pierre Boulez, who will quit in 1977 after six years to head a new musical-research institute. A onetime enfant terrible of the avantgarde, Boulez had a reign that was not so much stormy as trying--on him, the management and the subscribers. He was a supreme orchestral technician--his men called him the French Correction--and a master of 20th century music.

But Boulez was not able to charm the older subscribers or assert himself as an exciting interpreter of the bread-and-butter repertory. The Philharmonic will be looking to Mehta to repair those weak spots. Only 26 when he took over the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1962, he still carries the nickname "Zubi Baby," but no one denies his musical credentials or his sex appeal. He does not dance on the podium like Leonard Bernstein, another predecessor in New York, but he does have an elegant presence.

Mehta's appointment ended a yearlong search at the Philharmonic. Sir Georg Solti, director of the Chicago Symphony, turned down the post last year. Cleveland's Lorin Maazel and London's pianist-conductor Daniel Barenboim were also mentioned. Mehta himself said no when first asked if he wanted to be among those considered. When the Philharmonic came back with a firm offer a month ago (for an amount undoubtedly in excess of $100,000), he gave in. "My decision was a hard one," he said last week. "But New York is the center of the world now, and it is important to me that I be there."

The Mehta era will not exactly be a period of post-Boulez retrenchment, but it will be more traditional. Mehta's strengths are Brahms, Wagner and such post-romantics as Bruckner and Strauss. About his ability to develop and sustain an orchestra, Los Angeles Executive Director Ernest Fleishman says, "Zubin built the Philharmonic from an orchestra of the secondary rank to one of the dozen greats in the world." Mehta cried when he announced his departure at a morning rehearsal. The orchestra wept with him. Said one member, "New York is lucky to get him."

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