Most Happy Man

The London police were questioning an American who had tried to buy a watch with Andre Previn's credit card. The suspect produced an orchestration of Previn's identity papers along with a crescendo of protests. At length the detective in charge went through the motions of dismissing him. As the man turned to leave, the officer said casually, "By the way, that Vaughan Williams piece you played last week on television--was that his seventh symphony or his eighth?" The suspect stared at the detective for one slack-jawed moment. Then in disgust he threw up his hands and said, "Oh, hell!"

The real Andre Previn, who has since recovered his stolen wallet, cites this story to illustrate his impact on music audiences since he became principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra four years ago. Previn is England's newest cottage industry, a musician in constant permutation--conductor-composer, composer-pianist, pianist-conductor--producing music in such unremitting abundance on television, recordings and in the concert halls that one expects any day to find him busking with mouth organ for the queues at the Palladium.

Sure Beat. There is, actually, no time for busking, since Previn is booked solid with other engagements far into 1975. Last week he finished supervising a two-week festival and workshop at London's arts complex on the south bank of the Thames, participating in no fewer than seven programs with astonishing versatility. One night he was conducting a chamber orchestra in Mozart, another playing jazz piano with Guitarist Barney Kessel, another accompanying Soprano Judith Raskin at the piano in Schubert lieder, another joining the Yale String Quartet in Brahms chamber music. After a brief rest, Previn will pick up his regular routine, recording, composing, appearing in TV specials, dashing off essays for Punch and conducting about 100 concerts a year with the L.S.O. and other orchestras in England and on world tour.

At 43, Previn can no longer be dismissed as a Hollywood upstart from the wrong side of the sound tracks. At the piano, in jazz or in Brahms, his playing is fluid and sparkling with character, although he often seems restrained, as if afraid of damaging the keys. His podium manner is similarly unshowman-like--self-effacing, in fact--but his sure beat, his quest for clarity of sound and shape, have reaffirmed the L.S.O. as one of the world's best orchestras.

Ever since his German refugee parents took him, at age nine, from Berlin to America, Previn has been feeding on music. When his father had friends in for chamber music, Andre sat under the piano and listened. Later he got up and sat at the keyboard, learning to play symphonies in piano transcriptions. He also studied composing and conducting. At 16, he was scoring at MGM--with starlets as well as music. With his second wife Dory, he wrote pop hits. He collected Oscars and money.

At 30, he was bored. "I had to create hurdles that would keep my mind from going to sleep at noon," he told TIME Correspondent Jesse Birnbaum last week. "I decided that rather than do another 'brilliant' movie for Debbie Reynolds, I'd prefer to conduct Brahms' Requiem in Kalamazoo and fail." So he conducted Brahms' Requiem in Kalamazoo and failed. Or maybe it was some other piece in some other town. In any case, it was tough starting. Eventually Previn won a regular post with the Houston Symphony. But after two lackluster seasons, he opted for the more sophisticated ambience of London.

Stopping at a Hampstead pub one day last week with his third wife, Actress Mia Farrow, Previn mused about his new life: "Some critics complain that I'm too facile, too concerned with sound rather than content. That hurts because I work hard, damned hard. But I do enjoy most making an orchestra 'sound,' making it project and play with the wish to sound beautiful. Do you know, every time I walk through Festival Hall when it's deserted, I'm moved? I realize I've achieved what I've always wanted. I work here. I'm a happy man."

With that, Previn walked to the bar for another round, and the publican said to him: "Mr. Previn, when are you going to give us another bit of Elgar?" To Andre Previn, that's worth a dozen Debbie Reynolds movies any time.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.