Maestro Zubin Mehta says he was lured into the Australian World Orchestra fold by the promise of plenty of cricket. If he agreed to conduct the AWO on tour, he remembers the orchestra’s founder and conductor Alex Briger telling him, they would time their convergence on Australia with the Ashes. “This has never happened,” twinkles the maestro, who is returning to Australia for concerts in Melbourne this week.

Mehta once took tea with Sir Donald Bradman at the Adelaide Oval. What was the Don like over tea and a bun? “Very simple, very humble,” says Mehta wistfully. “He talked about Indian cricketers who used to write to him.”

It’s safe to say that Zubin Mehta, who came from Mumbai to reach the top rank of the world’s conductors, is not so simple. We meet in Edinburgh, where the Australian World Orchestra is a guest of the annual Edinburgh International Festival of the Arts. The following night they will present a single, triumphant performance including Webern, Debussy and Dvorak’s seventh symphony – with a rousing Dvorak encore – before heading south to London’s Royal Albert Hall for the Proms.

It is Mehta’s third tour with the AWO, in which musicians from the Australian diaspora – who normally play with orchestras in Europe or the United States – come together to play with their compatriots. These are joyous get-togethers. A British publicist at an opening reception is amazed by how fast the wine seems to be disappearing. More astonishing still is how much musical talent Australia exports. As we walk to their rehearsal space in Glasgow, Briger remembers how the point came in his career when he had to travel. It was the only way to see what other conductors did.

That was certainly true, over a generation earlier, for the Maestro. Mehta is now 86 and visibly frail, having survived cancer of the kidney. In rehearsal, however, he is as relentless in his pursuit of the sound he wants. Gabrielle Thompson, the tour producer, describes him as “a hammerer”, determined to get details right, but the hammer is as soft as a drum brush.

Over his decades at the helm of his various orchestras – Montreal from 1961-67, Los Angeles from 1962 to 1978, New York from 1978 to 1991 and the Israel Philharmonic from 1977 until 2019 – as well as countless guest tours, he has been widely perceived to be “gentle, kind, fair, generous” to his players. The New York critics said he was too kind altogether; like the city, their orchestra was notoriously abrasive, as were many of the local reviews.

Against this were the standing ovations, friendships and collaborations ranging from Isaac Stern to the Three Tenors to Frank Zappa; Jacqueline du Pre once said “he provides a magic carpet for you to float on”. And the dirt dished by music critics could hardly be more challenging than the responses in Israel whenever he ventured support for a two-state solution. “I’ve spoken my mind, the main politicians know what I think,” he says. “None of these politicians could ever get rid of me. One or two tried and there was an uproar. Nobody touches Mehta!”

Israelis have been loyal to him – as he has been to them – since the Six Day War in 1967, when he flew into the country to stand in for a colleague who had turned tail, leaving the orchestra with a string of concerts to play and no conductor. He has since played 4000 concerts with them and, in 1981, was made artistic director for life; he is emeritus now. The Israel Philharmonic is his family.