PREVIN

by Helen Drees Ruttencutter ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 29, 1985

Ruttencutter's music-biz portrait of conductor Previn appeared in an earlier, shorter form in The New Yorker. Expanded, it has a slickness and brio readers might associate with Previn's early Hollywood-&-jazz-piano careers. Though Ruttencutter had Previn's help in writing, he is not very forthcoming about his private life, which is assiduously avoided in favor of music chat and music politics. A sense of the man comes through--and of his Ariel abilities as a conductor, his striving for orchestral transparency, his dedication, good taste, modesty, great aloofness and reserve, his pained appearance when not actually engaged in playing or conducting and the melting of the pain into a more rhapsodic face when rehearsing or playing. It is an engaging portrait, or colorful fact-pastiche, with few dark tones, rather like a score with the basses left out, or an enormous introduction that leaves off just as the first complication appears. Previn was born a Jew in Berlin in 1929, showed early signs of musical genius and was enrolled in the Berlin conservatory at six. In 1938 his family fled the Nazis, stopping in Paris for nine months (where Andre attended the Paris conservatory) before their visas arrived allowing them to head for Los Angeles. His entry into Hollywood was ""surreal""--his uncle conducted at Universal Studios--a period Previn calls his ""Esther Williams days."" His breakthrough came when he was hired to write a piece for Jose Iturbi and went on to score it as well. From there he won Oscars for his scores for Gigi, Porgy and Bess, Irma La Douce and My Fair Lady. When he decided on conducting (the, London Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony and now the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestras), some benighted people thought he blew a great Hollywood career. Previn's marriages, among them to Dory Langdon and Mia Farrow, aren't discussed. The music chat is terrific, if all canape; the rehearsals absorbing. And the book does prompt you to break out your Previn recordings for some hours with virtuoso orchestral effects, and to agree with isaac Stern that Previn is the most unacknowledged great conductor alive.

Pub Date: Aug. 29, 1985

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1985

Categories: NONFICTION