Zubin Mehta at Kolarac: 90th Birthday With Wagner, Dvorak
The maestro, who turned 90 on April 29, returns to the Belgrade Philharmonic, and sources disagree on when it all began and how many meetings this makes.
Fifteen minutes of ovations kept Zubin Mehta on the Kolarac stage after his last performance with the Belgrade Philharmonic, so he turned to the audience and said: “After conducting the greatest orchestras in the world, I can tell you that the Belgrade Philharmonic is one of the best!” RTS reported on that evening, and the conductor, who turned 90 on April 29, 2026, returns to the same stage on October 23, 2026, at the Kolarac Foundation in Belgrade.
What will Zubin Mehta conduct at Kolarac?
The program has three 19th-century works: the overture to “Rienzi” by Richard Wagner, Franz Schubert’s Third Symphony and Antonin Dvorak’s Seventh Symphony. For comparison, at the gala concert in the same hall on June 20, 2023, which marked the Philharmonic’s 100th anniversary, Mehta conducted Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony and Berlioz’s “Symphonie Fantastique,” so the repertoire does not repeat this time.
The concert is part of his birthday celebration, which began in Mumbai, Mehta’s hometown, where the Belgrade Philharmonic performed on January 15 and 16, 2026. Kurir reports that the pianist Lang Lang also appeared with the orchestra and the maestro on that tour.
How many times have they worked together, and since when?
Here the sources part ways. According to RTS, the Kolarac gala will be the 19th meeting between the maestro and the Belgrade Philharmonic. In its June 2023 announcement, the Philharmonic itself counted that performance as its 11th collaboration with Mehta. The counts differ, and neither source explains why.
The disagreement extends to the starting point. RTS says the friendship began in 1958, when the Belgrade Philharmonic gave the young conductor one of his first professional chances. The Philharmonic’s 2023 text does not confirm that: it says the last joint performance before it, in 2021, marked six decades since the first concert together, which was also Mehta’s debut with the orchestra. That arithmetic points to the early 1960s, not 1958. One figure does not rule out the other, but until an explanation arrives, 1958 remains the claim of a single outlet.
Who is Zubin Mehta?
Mehta has been music director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the New York Philharmonic, and he worked with the Israel Philharmonic for five decades. In the 2023 announcement the Philharmonic calls him the orchestra’s greatest friend, and it also notes that he organized a series of charity concerts and took part in the “Pika-Tocka-Tacka” project, launched by the Belgrade Philharmonic together with the Zagreb and Slovenian philharmonics.
The same announcement records that Mehta was 87 at the time and that the Belgrade concert opened a regional tour, which continued in Tirana on June 22 and in Skopje on June 24, 2023.
Where are the tickets, and what else does the season bring?
Mehta’s concert is part of the “Fortissimo 26/27” season, which the Philharmonic announced on its 103rd birthday. The season has 25 concerts at Kolarac, from October 2026 to June 2027, and besides Mehta it announces a Lang Lang gala concert at the Sava Centar on December 13, 2026.
Kurir wrote in June that ticket information for those two concerts would be published later. Individual ticket sales for the season began on July 13, but neither the price of a ticket for Mehta’s performance nor the start time is given in the available announcements. For comparison, tickets for the 2023 concert cost 4,000, 6,000 and 8,000 dinars.
