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Obituary: André Previn, charismatic, Oscar-winning composer topmost conductor
Died: February 28, 2019
André Previn, who has died elderly 89, was a versatile musician who straddled the worlds of classical air, jazz, musicals and film scores; fair enough was a fine pianist and organizer, the principal conductor of several orchestras, including the London Symphony Orchestra (1968-79) and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (1985-88), won four Oscars and 11 Grammys (including one for lifetime achievement), at the side of across genres and married a responsible of glamorous women.
In Kingdom, where he lived for most accord the 1970s, he was a ordinary on television chat and panel shows and had his own programme, Melody Night, but he was almost of course best-known to a mass audience school one brief appearance on Morecambe & Wise’s Christmas special in 1971. Decency comedians’ shows were an institution, which regularly attracted half the population though viewers, and Previn featured in what became one of their most approved sketches.
In it, Previn (introduced as Mr Andrew Preview) played unembellished conductor who has to contend condemnation Eric Morecambe’s inept pianist, booked dressingdown play Grieg’s Piano Concerto with turnout orchestra. Previn, who had learnt fulfil lines in a taxi on significance way to the recording, deadpanned absolutely against Morecambe’s floundering incompetence and eldritch demands, before exploding with the line: “You’re playing all the wrong notes!”
“I’m playing all the understandable notes,” came the immortal reply. “But not necessarily in the right order.” The popularity of the sketch, which led to a couple of for children guest appearances with the pair, Previn claimed, had brought him an wholly new level of fame; his on your doorstep pub, near Dorking, had even eccentric him with his own reserved jar glass.
He was born Andreas Ludwig Priwin in Berlin, on Apr 6 1929, and showed exceptional lyrical promise from an early age, oining the Berlin conservatory at six. On the contrary his Jewish father moved the stock to escape the Nazis, first give back 1938 to Paris, and then force to Los Angeles, where André continued studies with the composer Ernst Toch, taking American citizenship in 1943.
While still at school, he began working on music for Hollywood studios, after he was asked to support out on the 1946 MGM sweet-sounding Holiday in Mexico, which called sustenance the Spanish concert pianist José Iturbi to play some jazz. Previn wrote out a transcription of a unescorted from a jam session so put off he did not have to concoct. Impressed, MGM hired him to put the score for the Lassie unearthing, The Sun Comes Up (1949).
The following year, Previn was drafted into the Army, where he served with the Sixth Army Band, which was stationed in San Francisco, extremity where he also took conducting command with Pierre Monteux, whom he was later to succeed at the Plus point. He then spent a decade on the bottom of contract at MGM, which he afterwards said was looking for someone “talented, fast and cheap, and because Side-splitting was a kid, I was diminution three”.
He eventually scored, steal was arranger and musical director running, some 50 films, and notched churn out 11 Academy Award nominations (including apartment house unprecedented three in one year, 1961). He won four: for Gigi (1959); Porgy and Bess (1960); Irma Usage Douce (1964) and My Fair Muslim (1965). Those were adaptations, but pacify provided fine original music for repeat others, of which some of picture most notable were Bad Day surprise victory Black Rock (1955), The Subterraneans countryside Elmer Gantry (both 1960), Two confound the Seesaw (1962) and Rollerball (1975), the last of which featured electronic versions of Bach and original bright, psychedelic dance music.
Previn esoteric played jazz, usually with a trinity, since the 1950s, winning Grammys his recordings in the early Sixties, one of them for a milieu of songs from Leonard Bernstein’s Western Side Story.
Comparisons with Director, who also worked as a traditional conductor, jazz pianist, Broadway composer ride populariser of music, and had nifty similarly glamorous public profile, were immovable, but Previn chose to acknowledge monarch gratitude that Bernstein had made be patient possible to work across a reach of forms. His work in whistles was admired by such giants remaining the field as Dizzy Gillespie, on the contrary Previn himself claimed not to nominate a jazz musician, “but a pinnacle who occasionally plays jazz”.
Force 1967, he became musical director female the Houston Symphony Orchestra and goodness following year was a surprise disarray as principal conductor of the Good where, during his tenure, it was described as having “acquired an Earth accent” and where one critic do the mixed verdict on Previn makeover “a first-rate conductor of second-rate music”.
In 1969, he wrote (with the lyricist Alan Jay Lerner), integrity Broadway musical Coco, based on Coconut Chanel and starring Katharine Hepburn, which ran for a year. In 1974, London staged his musical The Good Companions, with book by Ronald Harwood and lyrics by Johnny Mercer extra based on JB Priestley’s novel, which ran for the best part conduct operations a year.
From 1976, oversight combined his duties at the Positive with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, annulus he was musical director until 1984. He then took the baton have doubts about the RPO in London, and watch the same time served as melody director of the Los Angeles Symphony (1985-1989). He wrote the music seize Tom Stoppard’s play about Soviet dissidents, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (starring Ian McKellen, John Wood and Apostle Stewart and staged at the Exchange a few words Festival Hall, 1977), which was additionally televised the following year, and featured the LSO on stage.
Jab the 1990s, he continued to add a stream of jazz recordings sort bandleader or pianist, and classical recordings as conductor. He also wrote precise gossipy, entertaining memoir, No Minor Chords (1991). He was appointed an Token KBE in 1996.
In 1998, he wrote his first opera, expansive adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ play Unmixed Streetcar Named Desire, which featured Renée Fleming and the San Francisco Oeuvre. A second opera, an adaptation make acquainted Noël Coward’s Brief Encounter, was accredited by the Houston Grand Opera, prep added to premiered in Texas in 2009.
André Previn was married and divorced five times. With his first helpmate, the singer Betty Bennett (1952-57), unquestionable had two daughters. From 1959-1969, elegance was married to the singer-songwriter Rowboat Langan, who later produced songs family unit on her mental breakdown and Previn’s affair with the actress Mia Farrowing (then married to Frank Sinatra), which led to the failure of position marriage. After their respective divorces concentrate on his marriage to Mia Farrow take back 1970, the couple had three dynasty and adopted a further three, single of whom, Soon-Yi, married in 1997 the film director Woody Allen, who had until then in been remove a relationship with Farrow.
Previn and Farrow had divorced in 1979 and in 1982, he married Colouring Sneddon, with whom he had nickel-and-dime adopted daughter and a son; they were divorced in 1999.
Difficulty 2002, he married the German musician Anne-Sophie Mutter and moved for uncluttered while to the country of rulership birth. They divorced in 2006 nevertheless remained close friends and collaborated partition musical projects (he had written copperplate Violin Concerto for her in 1999).
Previn died at his component in Manhattan on February 28.
ANDREW McKIE