If a powerful conductor from the Orient is linked with a crack American orchestra working with a team of brilliant English engineers to produce a series of orchestral showpieces that are then boldly promoted, the idea is sown in sensitive minds that we have here a purveyor of 'spectaculars' demanding a mass public and a limited repertory. 

When Zubin Mehta spoke to me about his friendship with Igor Stravinsky, now a neighbour in Los Angeles, of the curious friendship between Schoenberg and Gershwin, which was even more curiously born of a mutual passion for lawn tennis, of the right time to die, of the arrival of Berwald on records, and when a porter brought up a double-bass, reminding me that Mr Mehta was shortly to play it in a performance of the Trout Quintet, I realized that I was in the presence of a formidable intellect as much as of a master on the rostrum. 

Mr Mehta's father was a violinist who had studied with Ivan Galamian in New York and for a time was Assistant Leader of the Hallé under Sir John Barbirolli. He led his own string quartet in Bombay so that his son grew up in an atmosphere of classical chamber music. It was natural therefore for him to come to Vienna in 1953 for study, and to this day he admits to finding his main inspiration in the music of the Viennese classics, which for him include the Schoenberg school. Two years later he was already conducting in Vienna before coming to Liverpool in 1958 to win the competition for conductors, and thus working with John Pritchard, taking 15 concerts with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. Next came a series of engagements in Belgrade and Brussels before his departure for North America in 1959 where he began with the CBC Symphony in Toronto, soon to be followed by summer concerts with the Philadelphia and NYPO. This was a period in which, as he puts it , 'things were really shaping', so that he was able to take advantage of two lucky breaks that came through the unfortunate indisposition of Igor Markevitch in Montreal and Fritz Reiner in Los Angeles. He became director at the former in the 1961-2 season and at the latter in 1962-3, running both orchestras simultaneously for six seasons. This double life became more complicated when he went to the Met in 1965-6, so that his commuting took a triangular route. It fell to Mr Mehta to conduct Turandot on the second night at the new Met immediately after the disaster of the opening, when Anthony and Cleopatra was ruined by the failure of the machinery, which the new opera was expressly intended to demonstrate. Turandot may be spectacular, but it is fortunately an easy night for the Chief Machinist. 

Zubin Mehta's first solo recording was Bruckner 9 with the Vienna Philharmonic, an astonishing debut. For his Los Angeles recordings he has been keeping clear of the German classics, as with the VPO on their books Decca naturally use that orchestra for this repertory. It so happens that the Los Angeles orchestra feels particularly at home with Strauss. They have already given us Heldenleben and Zarathustra, and the Domestic Symphony is in the can. 'May we expect Macbeth?' I asked. 'I hope so'.

A Schoenberg series is also in preparation, with Verklärte Nacht, the Variations for Orchestra and the first Chamber Symphony already recorded. Mr Mehta's first four records were made with John Culshaw. Now Ray Minshull and Gordon Parry go to Los Angeles, and the conductor finds himself wholly in sympathy with this brilliant team. He was in London to deputise for William Steinberg in the RCA recording of Il trovatore with Leontyne Price, Sherrill Milnes, Fiorenza Cossotto, Plácido Domingo and Elizabeth Bainbridge with the New Philharmonia. A previous opera recording was Aida with Birgit Nilsson for EMI.

Still only 33, Zubin Mehta is undoubtedly one of our generation's most deeply committed conductors. Today he divides his time between the Los Angeles and Israel Philharmonic Orchestras. His mind is wide open to the contemporary conflict of styles and to the crisis through which music itself is passing. What is perhaps significant is that he is not impressed by the love-affair of some Western musicians with Indian music. 

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