Paul Archibald Sounding Out

Asian conductors have made significant contributions in the classical music world for many years. Kent Nagano and Tadaaki Otawa (Japan) and Myung-Whun Chung (South Korea) among others. In this edition of In Conversation we look at two titans of the classical stage whose impact has been immense for close on fifty years. However, a new generation of talent is immerging so we pick two conductors who are up and coming and certainly worth keeping an eye on for the future

Xian Zhang (China)
Gérard Salonga (Philippines)
Zubin Mehta (India)
Seiji Ozawa (Japan) (1935-2024)

Kevin Puts (b. 1972)
Time For Three: Contact: II. Codes. Scherzo
Philadelphia Orchestra
Xian Zhang (conductor)

George Gershwin (1898-1937)
Variations on “I Got Rhythm”
Cecile Licad (piano)
South Denmark Philharmonic Orchestra
Gérard Salonga (conductor)

Gustav Holst (1874-1934)
The Planets, Op. 32: III. Mercury, the Winged Messenger
New York Philharmonic Orchestra
Zubin Mehta (conductor)

Peter Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)
Symphony No. 4 in F Minor, Op. 36:
IV. Finale. Allegro con fuoco
Orchestre de Paris
Seiji Ozawa (conductor)

Xian Zhang
Music Director: New Jersey Symphony Orchestra
Principal Guest Conductor: Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
Conductor Emeritus: Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano
Honorary Doctorate: The Juilliard School

Xian Zhang is certainly in high demand as a guest conductor, juggling a busy diary of guest engagements alongside her titled commitments. Throughout 2023/24, she is conducting Puccini’s Madama Butterfly at the Metropolitan Opera in New York and this follows on from a busy summer 2023 season which saw her conducting Boston Symphony at Tanglewood.
Zhang’s upcoming symphonic highlights include returns to the Philadelphia Orchestra, Seattle Symphony, Houston Symphony, Orchestra of St Luke’s, and National Symphony Orchestra DC.
She remains a popular guest of London Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Montreal Symphony, Toronto Symphony and Norwegian Opera where she returned recently for Puccini’s Tosca. The performance included in our proigramme – Letters for The Future (released 2022) – is Zhang’s recording on Deutsche Grammophon with Philadelphia Orchestra and the extraodinary string trio, Time for Three.
This performance won multiple GRAMMY awards in both the Best Contemporary Classical Composition nd Best Classical Instrumental Solo categories. Xian Zhang previously served as Principal Guest Conductor of the BBC National Orchestra & Chorus of Wales, the first female conductor to hold a titled role with a BBC orchestra.

Gerard Salonga is currently Resident Conductor of the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra in Kuala Lumpur. Maestro Jaap van Zweden invited him to the position of Assistant Conductor of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra from 2016 to 2018 selected from a field of over 170 international applicants.
He also served as Music Director of the ABS-CBN Philharmonic Orchestra in Manila from 2012 to 2020 and in January 2021, Gerard began his term as the Music Director of the Orchestra of the Filipino Youth (OFY).
Gerards has conducted the Philippine Philharmonic, Shanghai Opera House Orchestra and Chorus, Thailand Philharmonic, Royal Bangkok Symphony, Singapore Symphony, South Denmark Philharmonic and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in iconic venues such as the Sydney Opera House and Royal Albert Hall, London.
His orchestral arrangements have been performed by orchestras such as the Hong Kong Philharmonic, Malaysian Philharmonic, RTÉ Concert Orchestra, New York Pops, Cincinnati Pops, Indianapolis Symphony, BBC Symphony, and Royal Philharmonic Orchestras.
The recording we feature today was made in 2019 in a collaboration with pianist Cecile Licad and the Sønderjyllands Symfoniorkester (Denmark) on a new recording of the works of George Gershwin for piano and orchestra.
Gerard was honoured as one of The Outstanding Young Men), the Philippines’ highest civilian award to achievers under the age of 40. In 2021 he was named one of the recipients of the SUDI National Music Awards by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA).

Zubin Mehta was born in 1936 in Bombay.
Zubin Mehta won the Liverpool International Conducting Competition in 1958 and was also a prize-winner of the summer academy at Tanglewood.
By 1961 he had already conducted the Vienna, Berlin and Israel Philharmonic Orchestras and has recently celebrated 50 years of musical collaboration with all three ensembles.
Zubin Mehta was Music Director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra from 1961 to 1967 and also assumed the Music Directorship of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra in 1962, a post he retained until 1978.
In October 2019 he celebrated his farewell with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra to which he has served for 50 years.
In 1978 he took over the post as Music Director of the New York Philharmonic commencing a tenure lasting 13 years, the longest in the orchestra’s history.
From 1985 to 2017 he has been chief conductor of the Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in Florence.
Zubin Mehta made his debut as an opera conductor with Tosca in Montreal in 1963.
Since then he has conducted at the Metropolitan Opera New York, the Vienna State Opera, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, La Scala Milano, and the opera houses of Chicago and Florence as well as at the Salzburg Festival.
Between 1998 and 2006 he was Music Director of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich.
He is an honorary citizen of both Florence and Tel Aviv and was made an honorary member of the Vienna State Opera in 1997, of the Bavarian State Opera in 2006 and of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde Wien in 2007.
The title of Honorary Conductor was bestowed to him by the following orchestras: Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra (2001), Munich Philharmonic Orchestra (2004), Los Angeles Philharmonic (2006), Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino (2006), Staatskapelle Berlin (2014) and Bavarian State Orchestra (2006).
In February 2019 the Berlin Philharmonic appointed him their Honorary Conductor.
The Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany was bestowed to him in July 2012.
Zubin Mehta continues to support the discovery and furtherance of musical talents all over the world. Together with his brother Zarin he is a co-chairman of the Mehli Mehta Music Foundation in Bombay where more than 200 children are educated in Western Classical Music.
The recording in our programme today is one of the iconic performance of The Planets by Gustav Holst. Mehta and the NY. Phil give a thrillingly executed and virtuosic reading that holds nothing back. It’s a brilliant recording that highlights swift tempi, performed in confident manner by one of the world’s great orchestras.

Seiji Ozawa was one of the leading conductors of his generation and was for several decades a major player on the international scene and a figure of historical significance on several counts.
He was the first conductor from Japan to achieve recognition in the west and the only one to date to attain superstar status, the longest serving music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (1973-2002) and one of the longest serving of any American orchestra.
His dress sense (including flowery shirts and cowboy boots and a roll-necked sweater rather than a dress-shirt) and extravagant podium movements, attracted attention from his first engagements in America in the 1960s.
Ozawa was born in Shenyang, China. His parents were Japanese, and having begun music lessons at the age of seven, he entered the Toho School of Music in Tokyo when he was 16.
Graduating in 1959, he won first prize in the international conductors’ competition at Besançon, eastern France (1959) and so impressed Charles Munch, one of the judges, that he invited him to the US, to the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood,
Having then taken the prestigious Koussevitzky award (1960), Ozawa won a scholarship to study with Herbert von Karajan in Berlin. It was there that he was spotted by Leonard Bernstein, who offered him a post as an assistant conductor with the New York Philharmonic (1961-65).
Ozawa’s career took off at this point, with a Carnegie Hall début in 1961, an invitation to conduct the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra in 1962, and engagements with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, culminating in the artistic directorship of the Ravinia festival (1964-68) and the music directorship of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (1965-69).
In 1970 Ozawa was appointed music director of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, a post he held until 1976.
The three-decade-long tenure with the Boston Symphony Orchestra helped develop a sense of confidence in the musicians who delighted in their own virtuosity. He is also created a darker, more Germanic sound colour, suitable for the mainstream repertoire of Beethoven, Brahms and Mahler.
In 1984 Ozawa was instrumental in the founding of the Saito Kinen Orchestra, an ensemble of distinguished Japanese musicians, gathered in tribute to the educationist Hideo Saito.
In 2002 he was appointed music director of the Vienna State Opera and in 2005 artistic director of the new Tokyo Opera Nomori.
In 2016 he published a book of conversations with the novelist Haruki Murakami under the title Absolutely on Music.
Our programme features a brilliant recording of Tchaikovsky’s Finale to his 4th Symphony and is a fitting tribute to one of the great and colourful conductors of our time.