Today marks the 80th birthday of the German born and American conductor, pianist and composer, André Previn. His father, who was an attorney and an amateur musician, noted his unusual musical aptitude and advanced sight-reading capabilites and enrolled him at the age of six in the Berlin Hochschule für Musik. Due to his Russian-Jewish heritage, his family was forced to leave Germany in 1938 for America via Paris; in 1943 he became a U. S. citizen and worked as an accompanist for silent movies and orchestrator at the MGM film studios. He followed the business and composed and conducted his own movie music. This led him to explore other musical avenues including conducting the classical repertoire, performing at jazz clubs and studying composition with such illustrious artists as Joseph Achron, Ernst Toch and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. He mastered his conducting skills with Pierre Monteux of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra during his leave from army service. He was the recipient of four Academy awards for his film adaptations of Gigi (1958), Porgy and Bess (1959), Irma la Douce (1963) and My Fair Lady (1964).
His career path was quite similar to Leonard Bernstein's as he balanced all of his diverse interests and talents.
His official conducting début occurred with the St Louis Symphony Orchestra in 1962, and he later was appointed to the podium of the Houston Symphony Orchestra in 1967. From 1968-1979 he was principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra and raised the stature of British composers including Ralph Vaughan Williams, William Walton and Benjamin Britten; his musical directorships have ranged from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra. His classical compositions encompass orchestral music, solo instrumental works, and vocal pieces. September 1998 witnessed the premiere of his opera A Streetcar Named Desire, based on the play by Tennessee Williams. He has been honored with several Grammy awards as well as the 2005 winner of the Glenn Gould Prize, the 2008 London Symphony Orchestra's Lifetime Achievement Award and the 2008 Gramophone Classic FM Lifetime Achievement Award.
If you want to learn more about him, please consult Martin Bookspan's Andre Previn: A Biography or Andre Previn's No Minor Chords: My Days in Hollywood. Be sure to listen to some of the Library recordings of him conducting as well as his educational BBC-TV productions.
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