I missed the fact that yesterday Andre Previn died. The announcement didn't appear in any of my news sources, which is a criminal oversight.
Previn was born in Berlin in 1930, leaving just ahead of the Holocaust in 1938, first to Paris, Then New York and finally ending up in Los Angeles.
Previn had the most various career in music that I can imagine. He started working for MGM in 1946 while still in high school. As he said, the studios "were always 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." By age 18, he was house composer/conductor.
Previn's movie work was nominated for an Academy Award 11 times, winning four times, each time back to back awards in successive years. He is the only composer ever nominated three times in the same year. He was responsible for the scores of Elmer Gantry, Irma Ladouce, and My Fair Lady.
Previn was also a top jazz pianist throughout his career, but primarily from 1947 to 1967 and again from 1989 to 2001. He preferred to work in a trio format with bass and drums, much like Oscar Peterson and Bill Evans, both of whom he admired greatly. Dizzy Gillespie said of his jazz work, "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."
What he did in between the two jazz periods was compose, perform and conduct classical music. He first succeeded Sir John Barbirolli as music director of the Houston Symphony, then added to his responsibilities principle conductor of the London Symphony and the Royal Philharmonic. At times, he was also principle conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony and of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
He seems to have not cared for much earlier than Haydn or later than Brahms. His interests in 20th century music began and ended with late romantic composers like Britten, Barber, Gershwin, Strauss, Rachmaninoff and such. He often conducted piano concerti from the piano, serving as soloist himself. If he ever recorded an opera, I'm unaware of it. During his 11 years as conductor of the LSO, the BBC ran a series of programs, Andre Previn's Music Hour, which made him a household name around the world.
Previn admitted he was not driven to compose unless someone made him, but he did compose at least two notable concertos, for Vladimir Ashkenazy at the piano, and for Yo Yo Ma on cello.
This probably sounds like a pretty busy life, but he also found time to be married five times. He married his second wife, Dory Langdon, in 1959 and she was a writing partner as lyricist on much of his movie music. He divorced her in 1969 when he was caught having an affair with his third wife, Mia Farrow.
Dory Previn had a nervous breakdown and, while hospitalized, was encouraged to write music as a form of therapy. If you can find it, her music is top quality confessional singer songwriter material. While others were writing about superficial angst, she had real, important issues to write about. On her first album, there's a lullaby-based song called Beware of Young GIrls about you know who.
"Beware of young girls
Who come to the door
Wistful and pale of twenty and four
Delivering daisies with delicate hands
Beware of young girls
Too often they crave to cry
At a wedding and dance on a grave . . .
We were friends, oh yes, we were
And she just took him from my life
Oh yes, she did, so young and vain
She brought me pain
But I'm wise enough to say
She will leave him, one thoughtless day
She'll just leave him and go away, oh yes"
Who come to the door
Wistful and pale of twenty and four
Delivering daisies with delicate hands
Beware of young girls
Too often they crave to cry
At a wedding and dance on a grave . . .
We were friends, oh yes, we were
And she just took him from my life
Oh yes, she did, so young and vain
She brought me pain
But I'm wise enough to say
She will leave him, one thoughtless day
She'll just leave him and go away, oh yes"
and she did when Woody Allen came along. You'll note that Allen left Farrow for her adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn.The rest is history.
His fifth marriage was to violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, for whom he composed a concerto.
One of the first classical albums I ever bought was Andre Previn's recording of Carmina Burana. It remains one of my favorite albums to this day. You don't have to be a decent human being to make good music. Previn and Wagner amply demonstrate that.
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