Commentary: At 86, Zubin Mehta reflects on his career, Mahler and the ‘Mehta Sound’

Zubin Mehta walks onstage more slowly than he did in his youthful, dashing days and is helped by a cane. Zubin Mehta conducts the L.A. Philharmonic in Mahler’s Third Symphony at Walt Disney Concert Hall Where does Mehta Sound come from? He once came to my performance of Mahler’s Fifth and didn’t like it.” Zubin Mehta conducts the L.A. Phil in Mahler’s Third Symphony at Walt Disney Concert Shortly after becoming music director of the L.A. Phil and not long before her death in 1964, Mehta visited Alma Mahler, the composer’s widow and a composer in her own right. Zubin Mehta conducts the L.A. Phil at Walt Disney Concert Hall Mehta’s longstanding connection with the Israel Philharmonic also continues, although he is concerned about the political havoc brought on by the new far-right government. This weekend, he leads an imaginative psychedelic program of “Ancient Voices of Children,” written in 1970 by George Crumb, a composer Mehta championed in L.A. and New York, and Berlioz’s “Symphonie Fantastique.” In December Mehta has two more weeks with the L.A. Phil, focusing on Beethoven and more Mahler.