The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, under the baton of Zubin Mehta and with Daniel Barenboim performing Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto, received rousing ovations from a capacity audience at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts last night.
The 110-member orchestra, in the concluding stages of its two-month tour abroad in celebration of Israel’s 30th anniversary, will perform again at the Kennedy Center Saturday night under the direction of Leonard Bernstein and then finish its tour with a concert Sunday night at Carnegie Hall in New York again under Bernstein’s direction.
The orchestra opened the tour with a series of 10 concerts in Mexico City in August as part of Mexico’s Cervantes Festival. It then performed in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, and Curitiba in Brazil from where they went to Montreal and Toronto.
A possibility had existed that the principles at the Middle East summit conference at Camp David, 60 miles away, would attend last night’s concert. Israeli Premier Menachem Begin had invited President Carter and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to attend, but none could come.
Israeli Ambassador Simcha Dinitz, who was the concert’s patron, also was unable to attend, being confined to the political conference along with other members of the three delegations. His wife, Mrs. Vivian Dinitz, was hostess at a reception following the concert, which was attended by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and his wife, former Undersecretary of State Joseph Sisco, who is now President of American University, Sens. Jacob K. Javits (R. NY) and Richard Stone (D. Fla.).
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