German pianist, composer, conductor Previn dead at 89
His eclectic career included Oscar and Grammy wins
André Previn, who blurred the boundaries between jazz, pop and classical music — and between composing, conducting and performing — in an extraordinarily eclectic, award-filled career, died Thursday at his home in Manhattan. He was 89.
His death was confirmed by his manager, Linda Petrikova.
Previn wrote or arranged the music for dozens of movies and received four Academy Awards.
Audiences knew him as well as a jazz pianist who appeared with Ella Fitzgerald, among others, and as a composer who turned out musicals, orchestral works, chamber music, operas and concertos, including several for his fifth wife, violinist Anne-sophie Mutter. He was also the music director or principal conductor of a half-dozen orchestras.
Critics described Previn as a “wunderkind in a turtleneck” and the “Mickey Mouse maestro” when he was in his 20s and 30s. He was often compared to Leonard Bernstein, a similarly versatile conductor, composer and pianist. And like Bernstein, Previn was no stranger to a life of glamour and media attention, particularly when actress Mia Farrow left Frank Sinatra, her husband, and married Previn after an affair that had become grist for the gossip columns.
Previn himself considered Bernstein an idol. “Bernstein has made it possible not to specialize in one area of music,” he said. “You no longer have to do just Broadway shows, or movies, or conduct — you can do any or all of them.”
And Previn did. In the 1960s, he appeared in sold-out classical and jazz concerts. Dizzy Gillespie marveled at his performances. “He has the flow, you know, which a lot of guys don’t have and won’t ever get,” he said.
He was born Andreas Ludwig Priwin on April 6, 1929, in Berlin. After his parents realized he had perfect pitch — his father had been an amateur pianist in Berlin — André entered the Berlin Conservatory when he was 6. His father, Jacob, a Polish-born lawyer who was Jewish, moved the family to Paris in 1938 to escape the Nazis.
André studied with Marcel Dupré at the Paris Conservatory for about a year before the family left for Los Angeles. There, he studied with composer and conductor Mario Castelnuovo-tedesco, violinist and composer Joseph Achron and composer Ernst Toch.
Previn became a U.S. citizen in 1943, and in 1950 he was drafted into the Army and served with the Sixth Army Band. He also studied conducting in San Francisco with Pierre Monteux, whom he later followed at the London Symphony.
A relative worked in the music department at Universal Studios, and Previn wrote music for movies even before he went into the Army.
He collected Oscars for scoring “Gigi” (1959), “Porgy and Bess” (1960), “Irma La Douce” (1964) and “My Fair Lady” (1965). He did not write classic songs like “Summertime” and “I Could Have Danced All Night”; rather, he arranged and orchestrated them. Like Bernstein, Previn also tried Broadway. With Allan Jay Lerner, he wrote “Coco,” a musical about designer Coco Chanel that starred Katharine Hepburn and ran for 329 performances in 1969 and 1970.
Also like Bernstein, Previn was a crowd-pleaser as a conductor. He remained principal conductor of the London Symphony until 1979; he was also the principal conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra from 1985 to 1988. In the United States, he held the Pittsburgh job from 1976 to 1984 right before taking over in Los Angeles.
As he approached 70, Previn turned to opera, writing “A Streetcar Named Desire” based on the Tennessee Williams play.
Previn also won 10 competitive Grammys from 1958 to 2004 and a lifetime achievement Grammy in 2010.
This year, Tanglewood had planned events to celebrate Previn’s 90th birthday. Tanglewood said the events would now be framed as a celebration of his life and work.