For all of its fifty years, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra has been the darling of the free world. Arturo Toscanini directed it in its first appearance, on December 26, 1936, in Tel Aviv. That performance, in an exhibition hall in a land that was not yet a Jewish state, began a musical phenomenon that still continues. This year, on its fiftieth anniversary tour, the IPO played to fully booked houses. It made new friends for Israel, for music, and for itself, and it got rave reviews from the critics, as it always has.
But Zubin Mehta, the orchestra's director for life, born in the same year as it was, would prefer to take it back to Egypt. That was the scene of its first foreign appearance, a few weeks after the Toscanini concert. Better still, he likes the idea of Moscow. "If only we could go to Moscow for a concert," he says, "we'd soon be among friends." If the reaction of the rest of the world is any indication, Mehta is probably right. From the beginning, the orchestra has enchanted people everywhere with its musicianship and its infectious élan.
The fascination began even before there was an Israel Philharmonic (or Palestine Symphonic Orchestra, as it was first known). It was not by chance that Toscanini conducted that first concert. Toscanini has no modern counterpart. He was a colossus in his time, without rivals, without peers, and well aware of it. His actions had a worldwide audience. He was an uncompromising opponent of fascism, and his decision to journey to the backwater of Tel Aviv was a studied gesture of defiance toward Hitler and his poisonous anti-Semitism.
It was also an opportunity to work with great musicians. By 1936 the Nazi menace was clear, and the top Jewish musicians of Germany and its neighbors had fled into exile. That so many of them came to Palestine was because of the efforts of the Polish violin virtuoso Bronislaw Huberman, founder of the orchestra. With the rise of the Nazis, Huberman transferred to Palestine the zeal he had displayed in the 1920s for the cause of Pan-Europe. As early as 1934, he devoted himself to building an orchestra for Palestine, as well as a haven for Jewish musicians without a country.
Huberman had recruited seventy great musicians by the time he journeyed to Lake Maggiore to ask Toscanini to conduct the opening concert. Toscanini quickly agreed. Huberman also wrote to Pablo Casals and offered him $3,000 (even then, well below the going rate of the leading cellist in the world) to play two concerts with the Palestine Symphony. As a return favor, he offered to go to Spain and play in Casal's beloved workingmen's concerts. Although Casals would play with the IPO after World War II, the Spanish Civil War precluded the exchange.
For that matter, 1936 wasn't a good year for starting symphony orchestras in Tel Aviv. Terrorist attacks delayed the opening from its original date in October. Toscanini conducted the orchestra in its first radio concerts. Once the season opened, it set the pattern for the future. Albert Einstein and Eleanor Roosevelt joined the 3,000 original subscribers to attend concerts. Jascha Heifetz came to perform with the Palestine Orchestra. But the violence that delayed that first concert continued to plague Israel. In 1937, while on the way to conduct a concert in Jerusalem, Sir Malcolm Sargent narrowly escaped an Arab sniper's bullet.
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