DORATI, MEHTA WITH ISRAELIS

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31139, 16 August 1966, Page 8

DORATI, MEHTA WITH ISRAELIS

The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra will give two concerts in Christchurch next month under two famous conductors, Anton Dorati and Zubin Mehta.

Dorati, a 60-year-old Hungarian, is renowned as a precisionist and trainer of orchestras. He has held many conducting posts, the most recent having been with the Dallas Symphony, the Minneapolis Symphony and for the last three years with the 8.8. C. Symphony. Mehta, a brilliant Indian conductor hardly out of his twenties, has been musical director of the Montreal Symphony since 1962, and joint conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic with Georg Solti. Mehta will conduct the first concert on September 7, in which the orchestra will play Webern's Six Pieces for Orchestra, Beethoven's Fourth Symphony and Dvorak’s Seventh Symphony. Dorati will conduct on September 10, when the programme includes Brahm's Second Symphony, and two works by Stravinsky, the Violin Concerto in D with Zvi Zeitlin as soloist, and the “Firebird Suite.” The Italian conductor, Carlo Maria Guilini, who was to have toured with the orchestra, withdrew because of illness.

The Israel Philharmonic was formed as the Palestine Orchestra in 1936 through the vision and energy of the violinist, Bronislaw Huberman. His aim was to find work for the many fine Jewish musicians who had lost their positions in European orchestras as the result of the Nazi persecutions. On December 26, 1936. in a converted exhibition hall in Tel Aviv, the orchestra gave its inaugural concert under the baton of Arturo Toscanini. In its very first season the orchestra played under such other renowned conductors

,as William Steinberg and Sir Malcolm Sargent. Although the Israel Philharmonic is 50 years old it has never had a permanent conductor, preferring to draw on an international pool of eminent guest artists. The home of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra is the 3000-seat Fredric R. Mann Auditorium in Tel Aviv. The main activities of the orchestra are subscription concerts in the three cities of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa with a total of 32,600 subscribers. It gives an average of 11 concerts a fortnight, including special Youth Concerts and concerts for the Armed Forces, the latter given free of charge.

Besides its concerts, the orchestra provides gifted young musicians with a dozen scholarships annually and helps others towards graduate training.