You can imagine the fright of the Jewish lawyer, Jacob Priwin, as in the late autumn of 1938, an SS man on his door rings. “Don’t you recognize me, perhaps, because of the Uniform,” says the uninvited visitor, “but you defended me a few years ago in a process, and now I come to warn you: you must leave immediately with your family in Berlin, without large Luggage. You can do so, as if you were going away for the weekend.“

The Priwins really manages to get same-day seats on a plane to Paris. A year, you will stay in the French capital, then the outbreak of war drives them in the USA, to Los Angeles, where the father must take the family as a piano teacher. In the documentary “André Previn – a bridge between two worlds” by Lillian Birnbaum and Peter Stephan Jungk Mia Farrow is told in this dramatic escape story. As the actress is learning the son of the Jewish lawyer from Berlin, he is already a celebrity in his new home. He has adapted his name for American tongues, 1943 U.S. citizen and has made a Hollywood career. Mia Farrow will be in 1970, his third wife.

Jazz at the highest level

His classical music-loving father, André Previn was especially grateful that he played with the son for the night, in four-handed piano. And always from the leaf, across the symphonic Repertoire. So could not develop the young André only a tremendous knowledge of the Repertoire, which comes to him later, as he is the main professional conductor, to the benefit of, but also a matter of course, a looseness as a Pianist. He uses to make Jazz at the highest level.

“I know of in the entire history of music is not a such a multi-talent like you,” says the soprano Renée Fleming in the documentation. Previn is dismissive because, although modest, but in fact, the spectrum of his artistic activities from the beginning has been impressive. As a 13-year-old jazz pianist, he has his first gigs in Radio, with 16 he can make the first Disc, along with jazz greats such as Willie Smith, Red Callender.

at just 20 years of age, he composed his first film music for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer production “The Sun Comes Up”. Many other Soundtracks to follow, between 1959 and 1965, he wins four Times the Oscar for best film music: “Porgy and Bess”, “Gigi”, “Irma La Douce” and “My Fair Lady”. There are Musicals, adapted Previn for the Film, bringing the score, which was written for a small cast, as she is on Broadway is common, to the lush sound format of the Hollywood orchestra, and also any quantity of background music adds.

Previn is famous and has a lot of money, but his life motto is: “the Moment where you say to yourself: Me, what I do, and I’m so on, you will get old and boring.” So he is by the great Maestro Pierre Monteux, the conductor of train, debuting in 1963 in Saint-Louis, in 1967 the chief conductor in Houston and can take over the following year, the prestigious London Symphony Orchestra.

Always a pleasant guy

in addition, he composed, now in serious style, where he combines late-romantic traditions with the musical language of Béla Bartók, whose Concerto for orchestra for the 13-Year-old, once the classic revival experience. In 1998, in San Francisco, premiered the Opera “A Streetcar Named Desire” by Tennessee Williams will be the biggest E-music success. Several pieces he also writes for the violinist Anne-Sophie mutter, with whom he worked from 2000 to 2006 in the fifth marriage married.

André Previn was always a pleasant guy, not a Beau, but a man with charm, the fun in making Music, whether it was just a jam session or he prepared the great masterpieces with famous orchestras. And he was good in everything he to help. The ten Grammys he was able to collect in the course of his long career, he has been awarded in seven different categories. Mia Farrow says in the documentation of Previn’s chameleon-like abilities: “If you’re doing Jazz, then you’re a typical American, if you kick but in front of an orchestra, are you suddenly in a posh British accent, and you would like to call you Sir André.”

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Anne-Sophie mutter and Daniel Barenboim, The tenderness of giants

Eleonore Büning

Against Germany had André Previn, in spite of his traumatic flight experience no grudge: “I always had too much to remind me of the past.” At the age of 89 years, in every respect, boundless musician, André Previn has died in New York now.