(6 April 1929 - 28 February 2019)
How do you sum up the life and career of the German-American musician, composer and conductor André Previn, who has died at the age of 89? He was involved in so many aspects of music, be it jazz, classical, musical theatre and, yes, films, that it is hard to know where to begin. He even proved his mettle as an actor by working with Morecambe & Wise on a television sketch that has forever imprinted his persona on the great viewing public. For just that TV performance alone, Previn will always be remembered.
However, to begin at the beginning, in 1938 his Jewish family moved from Berlin to the USA and settled in Los Angeles. Still in high school, André began arranging and composing for MGM, who had discovered the teenager on a local radio station. At the age of 18 he was a composer-conductor at the studio, writing his first film score at the age of 20 for The Sun Comes Up, the first film to feature Lassie the dog. He subsequently worked as arranger, conductor, composer or musical director on titles including Three Little Words, The Violent Hour, Give a Girl a Break, Kiss Me, Kate, Young at Heart, It’s Always Fair Weather, Kismet, Bad Day at Black Rock, Wedding Breakfast (aka The Catered Affair), Bells Are Ringing, Designing Woman, Gigi, Elmer Gantry, One, Two, Three, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Silk Stockings, Porgy and Bess, Sweet Bird of Youth, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Dead Image, Two for the Seesaw, Irma La Douce, My Fair Lady, Inside Daisy Clover, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Paint Your Wagon, The Music Lovers and Rollerball, among many many others.
Previn had started his musical career as a jazz pianist, making his first album at the age of 16. He continued with this and worked on and off with many other celebrated jazz artists into the 1990s. From the early 1960s he had concentrated on conducting, first with the Houston Symphony, then the St Louis Symphony and from 1968 he was the principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra. Later he took over at the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Royal Philharmonic and the Oslo Philharmonic. He recorded hundreds of albums of jazz, classical, contemporary and film music. He composed two operas, A Streetcar Named Desire and Brief Encounter and theatre musicals including A Party with Betty Comden and Adolph Green, Coco, The Good Companions and the incidental music to Tom Stoppard’s Every Good Boy Deserves Favour. His orchestral compositions include overtures, works for cello, guitar, piano, violin, harp and some double and triple concertos plus very many pieces of chamber music. He also collaborated on several jazz and pop songs.
Previn won many awards, including Oscars for Gigi, Porgy and Bess, Irma La Douce and My Fair Lady, plus several Grammy Awards, including a lifetime achievemant award. He was appointed an honorary KBE, Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1996. André Previn was married five times, including to the singer-songwriter Dory (Langan) Previn, the actress Mia Farrow and the violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter. He was father to ten children.
MICHAEL DARVELL
