FAREWELL TO…
André Previn Born 1929 Conductor, pianist and composer
For sheer versatility and charisma, André Previn had few peers. Whether as a composer, conductor or pianist, or working within classical, jazz or film music, he was the most natural of musicians.
Born in Berlin, Previn fled Nazi Germany to the US with his family aged eight. He displayed immense and musical skill from an early age, learning from the likes of composers Dupré and Castelnuevo-tedesco and, later, the conductor Pierre Monteux. With an uncle working at Universal Studios, he soon found work arranging and composing for films, going on to win four Academy Awards, for Gigi (1959), Porgy and Bess (1960), Irma La Douce (1964) and My Fair Lady (1965).
Despite having an early career as a jazz pianist, he went on to focus on classical music, with roles as principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in the UK, and music director of the Houston Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony and Los Angeles Philharmonic in the US. He became a household name on British television as the star of André Previn’s Music Night on the BBC. He also, famously, starred on the Morecambe and Wise show where he played the exasperated conductor ‘Andrew Preview’, guiding Morecambe through Grieg’s Piano Concerto.
Previn’s discography is as long as it is distinguished, including acclaimed versions of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue and Concerto in F, in which he conducted the orchestra from the piano (see p118). Though he conducted less frequently in his later years, Previn continued to compose. His first opera, A Streetcar Named Desire, was premiered at the San Francisco Opera in 1998 with Renée Fleming playing protagonist Blanche Dubois. He was married five times, the last of which was to the German violinist Anne-sophie Mutter, for whom he wrote a concerto in 2003.
Dominick Argento Born 1927 Composer
Born to Sicilian immigrant parents in Pennsylvania, Dominick Argento took piano lessons and taught himself music theory before studying music at Baltimore’s Peabody Conservatory. With 14 operas to his name, Argento was a prolific choral writer, and also composed song cycles and orchestral works for both large- and small-scale forces. The song cycle From the Diary of Virginia Woolf, written for mezzosoprano Janet Baker, earned Argento the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for Music. A career in composition was accompanied by a professorial role at the University of Minnesota – a post he held for 40 years. Composing into his late 80s, Argento only stopped when hearing difficulties prevailed.