In Mumbai, for his supposedly last show at NCPA, Zubin Mehta said he may not put down the baton soon

Globally celebrated conductor Zubin Mehta was greeted with a standing ovation as he walked to the podium at Mumbai’s packed Jamshed Bhabha Theatre recently. In the last two shows, Zubin conducted music by German composer Richard Strauss including the tone poems ‘Don Juan’ and ‘Ein Heldenleben’, and ‘Four Last Songs’ featuring American soprano Angel Blue, who came in as a last-minute replacement for Bulgaria-born Krassimira Stoyanova. He said, “I was totally enamoured by the Vienna School composers such as Mozart, Haydn, Gustav Mahler and Arnold Schoenberg.” Zubin made his conducting debut with the Tonkunstler Orchestra in Vienna’s Musikverein. Over the years, Zubin maintained his close friendship with pianist Daniel Barenboim and violinist Pinchas Zukerman, besides famed sitar maestro Pt Ravi Shankar, with whom he worked on the ‘Sitar Concerto No 2’.