André George Previn (; born Andreas Ludwig Priwin; April 6, 1929 – February 28, 2019) was a German and American conductor, composer, and pianist. His career had three facets: Hollywood films, jazz, and classical music. In each he achieved success, and the latter two were part of his life until the end. In movies, he arranged and composed music. In jazz, he was a celebrated pianist, accompanist to singers, and interpreter of songs from the "Great American Songbook". In classical music, he also performed as a pianist but gained television fame as a conductor, and during his last thirty years created his legacy as a composer.
Before the age of twenty, Previn began arranging and composing for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. He would go on to be involved in the music of more than fifty films and would win four Academy Awards. He won ten Grammy Awards, for recordings in all three areas of his career, and then one more, for lifetime achievement. He served as music director of the Houston Symphony Orchestra (1967–1969), principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra (1968–1979), music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (1976–1984), of the Los Angeles Philharmonic (1985–1989), chief conductor of the Royal Philharmonic (1985–1992), and, after a break from salaried posts, chief conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic (2002–2006). He also regularly conducted the Vienna Philharmonic.
Early life
Previn was born in Berlin to a Jewish family, the second son and last of three children of Charlotte (née Epstein) and Jack Previn, who was a lawyer, judge, and music teacher born in Graudenz, then in Germany but now in Poland.Frédéric Döhl, André George Previn, in the Lexikon verfolgter Musiker und Musikerinnen der NS-Zeit, Hamburg: Universität Hamburg, 2007 (in German) The eldest son, Steve Previn, became a film director. The year of Previn's birth is disputed. Whereas most published reports give 1929, Previn himself stated that 1930 was his birth year.Previn mentioned in the liner notes of the programme printed for his appearance as guest conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra during the 2006–07 season that his year of birth was 1930, and not 1929 as many sources claim. All three children received piano lessons and Previn was the one who enjoyed them from the start and displayed the most talent. At six, he enrolled at the Berlin Conservatory. In 1938, Previn's father was told that his son was no longer welcome at the conservatory, despite André receiving a full scholarship in recognition of his abilities, on the grounds that he was Jewish.
In 1938, the family had applied for American visas and during the nine-month wait to obtain them, left Berlin for Paris. Previn's father enrolled his son into the Conservatoire de Paris where André learned music theory. On October 20, 1938, the family left Paris and sailed to New York City. Their journey continued to Los Angeles, arriving on November 26.The Priwin family on the passenger list of the S.S. Manhattan from Le Havre to New York and of the SS City of Newport News from New York to Los Angeles. Andreas' age is listed as "9" both times, consistent with a birth year of 1929. His father's second cousin Charles Previn was music director for Universal Studios. Previn became a naturalized US citizen in 1943. He learned English, which was his third language after German and French, through comic books and other reading materials with a dictionary, and watching films. In 1946 he graduated from Beverly Hills High School and performed with Richard M. Sherman at the ceremony; Previn played the piano, accompanying Sherman, who played the flute.
In the film studios
Previn was involved in creating the music for more than 50 films and won four Academy Awards for his work.
Previn's career as a composer, conductor, and arranger at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios (MGM) began in 1946, while he was still in high school, after their music department noticed his work for a local radio program and hired him. Previn recalled that MGM was "looking for somebody who was talented, fast, and cheap and, because I was a kid, I was all three. So they hired me to do piecework and I evidently did it very well." His first official credit was for an entry in the Lassie series, The Sun Comes Up (1949), which much later he thought was "the most inept score you ever heard" after seeing a television rerun.
While a full-time employee at MGM in 1950, Previn was drafted into the military. Beginning in 1951, while stationed with the Sixth Army Band at the Presidio of San Francisco, Previn took private conducting lessons for two years from Pierre Monteux, then conductor of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, lessons which Previn valued highly.Canarina J. Pierre Monteux, Maître. Amadeus Press, Pompton Plains, Cambridge, 2003, pp. 204–205. In 1953, Previn returned to Hollywood and focused his attention on film scores and jazz. Previn stayed at MGM for 16 years, but despite the secure job and good pay, he had come to feel increasingly confined, and consequently desired to pursue classical music outside of film scores. He resigned from MGM at 32, wanting "to gamble with whatever talent I might have had".
His break with the film world in the 1960s, however, was not as complete and thorough as he would later claim. During this period, Previn won a 1964 Academy Award for My Fair Lady. His film work continued until 1975's Rollerball. Over his multi-decade film career, Previn was involved in the music of more than 50 movies as composer, conductor, and/or performer.
In jazz
Previn described himself as a musician who played jazz, rather than a jazz musician. Nevertheless, he proved to be a gifted jazz-piano interpreter and arranger of songs from the "Great American Songbook", winning the respect of prominent dedicated jazz artists. He separately worked as piano-accompanist to singers of jazz standards, from Ella Fitzgerald to Doris Day, recording prolifically. Like Oscar Peterson, whom he admired tremendously,Frédéric Döhl: André Previn. Musikalische Vielseitigkeit und ästhetische Erfahrung, Stuttgart 2012, p. 127. and Bill Evans, he worked often as a trio pianist, usually with bass and drums, collaborating with dozens of famed jazz instrumentalists. Previn also memorably filmed TV shows with Peterson (1974) and Fitzgerald (1979). Jazz critic and historian Ted Gioia wrote in his book about West Coast jazz, the scene to which Previn belonged:[His] projects varied greatly in terms of quality and jazz content, but at his best Previn could be a persuasive, moving jazz musician. [...] Despite his deep roots in symphonic music, Previn largely steered clear of Third Stream classicism in his jazz work, aiming more at an earthy, hard-swinging piano style at times reminiscent of Horace Silver. Long before his eventual retreat from his jazz work, Previn had become something of a popularizer of jazz rather than a serious practitioner of the music. At his best, however, his music reflected a strong indigenous feel for the jazz idiom.Ted Gioia, West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California, 1945–1960, Berkeley 1998, p. 278 – as quoted in Frédéric Döhl: André Previn. Musikalische Vielseitigkeit und ästhetische Erfahrung, Stuttgart 2012, p. 140.
Dizzy Gillespie on Previn, said:He has the flow, you know, which a lot of guys don't have and won't ever get. Yeah. I heard him play and I knew. A lot of guys, they have the technique, the harmonic sense. They've got the perfect coordination. And, yeah, all that's necessary. But you need something more, you know? Even if you only make an oooooooo, like that, you got to have the flow.Martin Bookspan/Ross Yockey, André Previn. A Biography, London 1981, S. 124 – as quoted in Frédéric Döhl: André Previn. Musikalische Vielseitigkeit und ästhetische Erfahrung, Stuttgart 2012, pp. 139–140.
As a conductor and composer of classical music
As conductor
He was music director of the Houston Symphony Orchestra, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Oslo Philharmonic, as well as the principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
In 1967, Previn succeeded Sir John Barbirolli as music director of the Houston Symphony Orchestra. In 1968, he began his tenure as principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO), serving in that post until 1979. During his LSO tenure, he and the LSO appeared on the BBC Television programme André Previn's Music Night. From 1975 to 1985, he was music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (PSO) and, in turn, had another television series with the PSO titled Previn and the Pittsburgh. He was then principal conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra from 1985 to 1991.
In 1985, he became music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Although Previn's tenure with the orchestra was deemed satisfactory from a professional perspective, other conductors, including Kurt Sanderling, Simon Rattle, and Esa-Pekka Salonen, did a better job at selling out concerts. Previn clashed frequently with Ernest Fleischmann (the LAPO's Executive VP and General Manager), including the dispute when Fleischmann failed to consult Previn before naming Salonen as Principal Guest Conductor of the orchestra, complete with a tour of Japan. As a result of Previn's objections, Salonen's title and Japanese tour were withdrawn; however, shortly thereafter, in April 1989, Previn resigned. Four months later, Salonen was named Music Director Designate of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, officially taking the post of music director in October 1992.
Previn was music director of the Oslo Philharmonic from 2002 to 2006, and in 2009 he was appointed Principal Guest Conductor of Tokyo's NHK Symphony Orchestra.
As a composer
André Previn left two concert overtures, several tone poems, 14 concerti, a symphony for strings, incidental music to a British play; a varied body of chamber music (six violin sonatas, other scores for violin and piano; sonatas for bassoon, cello, clarinet, flute and oboe, each with piano; a waltz for two oboes and piano, three other trios, a string quartet with soprano, a clarinet quintet, a quintet for horn and strings, a nonet, an Octet for Eleven (for eleven players), and three works for brass ensemble); several works for solo piano; dozens of songs (in English and German); a monodrama for soprano, string quartet and piano (Penelope, completed just before he died); a musical each for New York and London (Coco and The Good Companions); and two successful operas.For a full catalogue raisonné containing the dates, places and participants of premieres as well as the names and sources for lost works abandoned works, rejected works and withdrawn works, see Frédéric Döhl: André Previn. Musikalische Vielseitigkeit und ästhetische Erfahrung, Stuttgart 2012, p. 279–294.
Television
In his capacity as conductor, mainly, Previn enjoyed a long relationship with the medium of television. He featured in Meet André Previn (1969) on London Weekend Television, in the Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show in 1971 and 1972 (BBC), André Previn's Music Night (with the London Symphony Orchestra; three programmes in 1973, others in 1975 and 1976), and television interviews with other musicians. He made appearances on Call My Bluff and participated in documentaries about popular music and jazz during the 1970s and 1980s.BFI film archive search result for André Previn accessed 12 December 2017. In the United Kingdom he worked on TV with the London Symphony Orchestra. In the U.S. the television program Previn and the Pittsburgh (1977) featured him in collaboration with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.
"Andrew Preview"