Berlin, Germany, April 6, 1929 – New York, N.Y., February 28, 2019
Was there anything André Previn could not do? He moved with breathtaking ease from conducting to composing to performing, writing operas and concertos and film scores, playing jazz piano, and leading orchestras around the world. Born in Berlin as Andreas Ludwig Priwin, he died in Manhattan on February 28 at age 89. As a child, he fled Nazi Germany with his family in the late 1930s and emigrated to the U.S. By the time he was a teen, Previn was improvising music for silent films and working on Hollywood movie scores. Music-making for film and television was a connecting thread during much of his early and middle career. In the 1970s, he hosted the TV show André Previn’s Music Night on the BBC with the London Symphony Orchestra. He won Oscars for his musical arrangements for four films; his original film scores included Elmer Gantry, Inside Daisy Clover, and Dead Ringer; and he wrote the songs for Valley of the Dolls. He was renowned as a jazz pianist and as an interpreter of the Great American Songbook.
Classical music was at the core of Previn’s life. Beginning in the 1960s, he was music director of the Houston Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, and Los Angeles Philharmonic; principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra and Royal Philharmonic; and principal guest conductor of Tokyo’s NHK Symphony Orchestra. The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra noted on its tribute page to Previn that he was widely credited for launching a new era there. Robert Moir, the Pittsburgh Symphony’s former vice president for artistic planning, remembers that shortly after Previn’s appointment in 1976, he said, “When I arrived for the first rehearsal, the musicians were tuning and doing the thing with the reeds and all that. And I suddenly had a moment of absolute pleasure. I thought, ‘That’s my orchestra. They’re tuning for me.’ I couldn’t get over it. It was so wonderful.” Among his accomplishments was Previn and the Pittsburgh, a string of award-winning television specials that ran for three years. In the 1980s, he composed a harp concerto for the Pittsburgh Symphony’s principal harp, Gretchen Van Hoesen, and Reflections for English Horn, Cello and Orchestra for Anne Martindale Williams, principal cello, and Harold Smoliar, principal English horn. He wrote song cycles, including Honey and Rue for Kathleen Battle; more concertos, including one for pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy and another for violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter; and the operas A Streetcar Named Desire and Brief Encounter. The media spotlight often zeroed in on Previn’s glamorous lifestyle—his third marriage was to actress Mia Farrow, and his fifth and final one was to Anne-Sophie Mutter. But it was his connection to music that remained most constant. Previn was composing until the end of his life.
