André Previn

Speaker 20:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety six, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:28

My Castaway this week is a composer and conductor. After his parents fled from Nazi Germany he grew up in California, where his skill as a jazz musician won him a job at MGM and led to four Oscars for his film scores.

Presenter0:41

In the sixties he turned his back on Hollywood, and as principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra set out to establish himself as a serious musician, despite succumbing to the occasional appearance on the Morecombe and Wise Show.

Presenter0:53

For nearly twenty years now he's worked with many of the world's most famous orchestras, particularly the Vienna Philharmonic, gradually losing his celebrity status in the process. He's had four wives, including Dorrie Previn and Mia Farrow, but remains grateful for his change of circumstances. It really is nice, he says, to be just considered a musician these days. He is Andre Previn. Is that to suggest, Andre, that you you didn't enjoy your celebrity status?

André Previn1:20

Oh, I enjoyed it a great deal, but uh uh I'm not sure that I like the emphasis on the word just in as in just a musician. Uh

Presenter1:29

Well, I'm quoting you.

André Previn1:30

Yes, I know you are. I know that's the the deadliest thing to do of all.

Presenter1:30

Uh

Speaker 31:30

Yeah.

Presenter1:30

Uh Uh

André Previn1:33

But I am pleased to be involved in music that is music for its own sake and not for the peripheral glamour of who's doing it.

Presenter1:41

But you you always seemed to enjoy that glamour when it was around. You seem to be such an extrovert. One thinks of you in the late sixties, early seventies with your Indian style jackets on, trendy flowered shirts.

André Previn1:52

But weren't we all? I mean, I I I I see pictures of of even extremely dignified people uh from the sixties and we all looked like uh ranging from interesting to twits.

Presenter2:04

But what made it so novel for us was that you came from the classical world, as it were, but we knew you'd been in Hollywood and therefore we knew you were accessible. That's what you were doing really. You were bridging that gap for us. But of course the price you had to pay then for all of that was that that the press were constantly camped on your doorstep, not just because of that, but also because you were married to a movie star, Tamia Farrow.

André Previn2:04

Right.

André Previn2:11

And therefore

André Previn2:23

No.

André Previn2:26

To be a f

Presenter2:27

And what's more, you know, wildly avant-garde, you had children before you were married. Did you accept then that that kind of attention came with the territory, or was it always a miserable business?

André Previn2:40

And I thought it was very tough.

André Previn2:42

on Mia, who was then married to me, and our babies.

André Previn2:46

And uh I we tried our best to uh

André Previn2:49

play it down, and I had fun once throwing a camera into a swimming pool.

André Previn2:54

But I'm not really given to those things and they don't come naturally to me. Although I I did enjoy it a lot. And I got a lot of points from Mia for it.

Presenter3:03

But is that what you mean when you say that you're pleased to be considered a musician and just for your music, as it were? Not just as you say. But is that what you mean? That that that kind of

André Previn3:10

Not just

Presenter3:14

The price that you pay for being a celebrity was a bore.

André Previn3:18

Well, I think it's much nicer now that there is a great part of audiences that don't know anything about my kids, don't know anything about my former marriages, and they're just taking me for what I do now, and that is a very happy circumstance.

Presenter3:30

And now you're you're melted down at Madame Tussaul, so you really do know you're safe.

André Previn3:33

Yes, yes, you really do know you're

Presenter3:37

So eight records, Andre, are an impossibility for anyone, let alone a musician. How have you set about choosing them?

André Previn3:44

I tell you what, eight is hopeless. I mean, you you might be able to come up with three after a great deal of arguing, and it would be certainly easier to come up with twenty five. But eight is right in the middle. It's too many to be exclusive and not enough.

Presenter3:59

In a

André Previn4:00

So these are the first eight that I came up with.

Presenter4:03

Tell me about the first one.

André Previn4:05

The first one is the Beethoven Violin Concerto, which has a second movement of such unsurpassable serenity that it always, no matter what else is going on in anyone's life, it will give you a different perspective. And this particular performance is by Anna-Zophi Motte, who is... well, I don't know anyone that plays the violin any better than this.

Presenter5:27

Part of the second movement of Beethoven's violin concerto played by Anna Sophie Mutter with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Herbert von Karian.

Presenter5:35

Beautiful, beautiful music, Andrei Previn. Can music m still move you to tears, does it?

André Previn5:40

Oh, yes, and how. When you're actually in the act of performing it, it doesn't tend to move you to tears because you you are still in control of performing it. But uh certainly when I'm listening it it can really get to me.

Presenter5:54

When was the first time, do you remember, that you actually stood up, you know, very early on, I'm sure, in front of an orchestra and conducted it? When was that moment that you thought, this is what I want to do?

André Previn6:04

It was studio musicians in Hollywood who were sick of playing studio music and they got together as an ad hoc orchestra and they would ask anybody who wanted to or who could conduct to do that and I remember doing that when I was about eighteen.

Presenter6:17

But was that a defining moment? Did you then know what I want to do with my life as conduct? Because you had a choice. You could play you someone said you could play eleven instruments, is that right?

André Previn6:20

Yeah.

André Previn6:25

No, that is exaggerated by ten, but that's all right. No.

Presenter6:29

But you could play jazz and you can improvise and you could transcribe. I mean you had a choice of careers.

André Previn6:33

Yeah.

André Previn6:34

Yes, I certainly have always written and I was writing for a living then and I've always been a a fairly good pianist. And I play a couple of other instruments very badly, I hasten to add. But when I conducted, I suddenly thought the repertoire that I admire above all others is the orchestral repertoire. And so this was a good way for me to to be a part of it always.

Presenter6:53

But when you made the great switch from Hollywood to classical music to the L S O you must have stood up in front of the L S O time and again without

Presenter7:02

Really I was going to say quite knowing what you were doing. I mean, with without really knowing the pieces.

André Previn7:07

No, that's not quite true. I may not have had a lot of empirical knowledge of the piece, but I like to think that I've never stood up in front of an orchestra without having had massive study time.

Presenter7:17

Because you do these days believe in in an enormous amount of rehearsal, don't you? Particularly for for very well-known pieces.

André Previn7:21

Come here.

André Previn7:23

Yes, absolutely.

Presenter7:24

I can explain that well.

André Previn7:25

Any great orchestra lives partially on the tried and true.

André Previn7:30

repertoire and then partially on new repertoire. The new repertoire tends to take a lot of technical time to prepare because it tends to be technically more difficult.

André Previn7:39

Therefore, very often there is a kind of unspoken feeling that, oh, well, if we're doing Beethoven seven, we can d get that done in forty five minutes and spend the rest of the time on the new things. And I won't do that because I think that very often

André Previn7:53

Habit breeds all kinds of playing that you must must really get rid of.

Presenter7:58

But interestingly, when you go on stage to play jazz, which you do still once a year you go on tour, you presumably have a a bunch of tunes and a a a vague idea of what you're going to do with them, but obviously by definition no rehearsal.

André Previn8:13

No. It's just it's all improvised. What we have is a list of tunes we have too many on the list so we can choose and skip around and uh a list of keys which we will probably play in.

André Previn8:26

And after that it just becomes a game.

Presenter8:28

There's no jazz on your desert island discs here. I wonder why that is.

André Previn8:31

Yeah.

André Previn8:32

I don't know. You know, it occurred to me when I looked at this list. I'm terribly fond of jazz. It moves me very much. It makes me happy. It makes me uh sad, all sorts of things. But if I'm reading the the intent of Desert Island Discs right, it is records that are exclusively the ones you will hear for the rest of your days. And in that case, I would rather have compositions uh than improvisations.

Presenter8:55

Tell me about your second record.

André Previn8:57

Second record, oh, well this is the the slow movement of Vaughan Williams's Fifth Symphony.

André Previn9:03

And it so happens that it is the LSO conducted by me in this recording. I've always had a a great predilection for British music, and and that was apparent very early on in my life here. And I recorded all nine of the of the Vaughan Williams symphonies.

André Previn9:17

And the fifth is the most touching for me and the most typical, and the slow movement I find really ravishing in the in the LSO knows just out of play.

Presenter10:27

Part of the third movement of Vaughan Williams Symphony No. five in D, played by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by my castaway, Andrei Previn. Going back to your very early days, to Berlin, where you were born at the end of the twenties, um, how soon was it recognised that Andreas, as you were christened, was going to be a musician?

André Previn10:46

Very early on.

André Previn10:48

We had music in the house at all times. My father was a a lawyer, very successful, and and he liked to play the piano, amateur piano, but very good.

André Previn10:56

So we had a house full of of leader singer and the chamber music at all times.

André Previn11:01

and I would be allowed to listen, which I did with great pleasure. And then I actually asked to have piano lessons, which is in in retrospect a hateful thing for a child to do, but uh I did it not to get points, but because I really wanted it.

Presenter11:15

How old would you have been then?

André Previn11:17

And I was put in the conservatory when I was six.

André Previn11:21

I knew from that day on that I I would I didn't know it precisely what, but I certainly knew I was going to be involved in music, yes.

Presenter11:28

So it was a comfortable existence, obviously, in Berlin. Everything was going well.

André Previn11:32

I was aware that we weren't at Butland's, if that's what you mean.

André Previn11:36

But uh on the other hand, I was very young, I was a child, I was very involved in my my music.

André Previn11:45

And the the horror that was going on to me was translated as a kind of adventure, you know, I didn't realize the implications of it.

Presenter11:52

Until you were expelled from the Conservatory, weren't you?

André Previn11:55

Uh yes.

Presenter11:56

For being Jewish.

André Previn11:56

Yes, right. And then shortly after that we we uh fled to Paris and and spent a year or so there.

Presenter12:02

How did you get out? How did the family get out?

André Previn12:05

It's one of those stories that that it it sounds like a film, but evidently my father was in his office and his secretary, quite white faced, came in and said there was an S S man waiting to see him.

André Previn12:15

and he said, If I leave with him, call my family.

André Previn12:18

And the man came in and said, Do you remember me? and my father in all honesty said no.

André Previn12:23

And he said, Well, you defended me many years ago on a case, and he said, And I'm going to do you a favor.

André Previn12:30

Leave.

André Previn12:31

Now, tonight.

André Previn12:33

And uh

André Previn12:35

My father realized that this was quite obviously

André Previn12:40

very deeply meant advice. And we left that night on the pretext of getting a weekend in Paris, which was still they couldn't prevent that because there had been no war declared yet. So uh we went as a family to Paris with kind of weekend money.

André Previn12:56

And uh my parents left absolutely everything house, library, paintings, uh money, silver, whatever.

André Previn13:03

And we went from there.

Presenter13:05

Never saw any of that stuff again, presumably.

André Previn13:07

No.

Presenter13:08

And you then went to New York and then very quickly after that, I think in 1939 to the West Coast to Fontainebleau.

André Previn13:15

California, yes.

Presenter13:16

But how could your father make a living? He was a German lawyer, you said.

André Previn13:19

He was a German lawyer and he did not speak English very well. He obviously couldn't pass the bar. It's a whole different set of uh rules and laws. And so he used his his love and his knowledge of music. And suddenly, if you think about it, the the detriment of having a German accent was a great plus if you were going to be the the the neighborhood German piano teacher, you see. So um he taught piano and it was a a kind of act of heroism on his part which I didn't realize till I was adult. You know, that there he was one day with his own law office and uh a couple of months later he was teaching untalented children in the neighborhood.

Presenter13:57

What about your musical education? Did that come to a halt as a result?

André Previn14:01

No. I was introduced quite rapidly to some very good teachers and went on from there. And I went to a perfectly straightforward, normal high school.

Presenter14:11

Beverly Hills High.

André Previn14:11

Beverly

André Previn14:12

It sounds very glamourous.

André Previn14:13

Well, the only thing memorable in retrospect about Beverly Hills High School, uh, which will give you an idea of what it was, is that it had a a student parking lot which was slightly bigger than Hampstead, I think. It was extraordinary. They took it for granted you could have your own car, which I did not. Then, of course, during my very last year in in Beverly Hills High School, I had already done

André Previn14:34

some uh peripheral work in radio stations and things as an arranger, as a pianist, at whatever.

André Previn14:40

and uh got a call to do piecework.

André Previn14:44

at uh Film Studios and that's how that started.

Presenter14:47

Record number three, tell me about that.

André Previn14:49

Ah rank at number three is the the debut.

André Previn14:52

Afternoon of a fawn

André Previn14:54

It's a piece that if you study it very carefully.

André Previn14:57

There really isn't a single solitary extraneous note in it. There's nothing that's put in just for sound, just for show. It's a it's a perfect piece. On this record it's it's conducted by a man who uh turned out to be my my conducting teacher, Pierre Monteur.

André Previn15:13

And what he didn't know about French music or about any music wasn't worth knowing.

Presenter16:17

Part of Debussy's Prelude à la Prémidie d'un fun, played by the LSO, conducted by Pierre Monte, the the teacher of my costway, Andre Previn. You quickly became a a kind of vunderkint in Hollywood, didn't you, Andre? What sort of things did you have?

André Previn16:31

Well, you know, they had a Wundakind of the Week there. It's not really that much of a...

André Previn16:36

But um I had a I had a wonderful time. There's all that soft weather and all those pretty girls and it was wonderful.

Presenter16:43

And all those stars. I mean, you you rub shoulders with all you were on swimming pool terms, I think, is the first time.

André Previn16:48

That's what a nice phrase. Yes, that's quite true.

Presenter16:50

Yes, that's quite Debbie Reynolds and Esther Williams, famous for his work.

André Previn16:53

I was never in a pool with Esther Williams. That would have been a nice thought. But no. No, but I was g great friends with a lot of wonderfully talented people.

Presenter16:56

The

Presenter17:01

And the story goes that you were propositioned by Ava Gardiner, but too naïve to recognize what was on your own.

André Previn17:05

Yes, that's a a story of enormous regret and unsurpassable stupidity. But yes, that's quite true. I didn't get it at the time, and I've thought about it ever since.

Speaker 317:17

What is she saying it was?

André Previn17:17

What is she saying?

Speaker 317:18

Give me the line. I mean, what did she say?

André Previn17:20

I don't think I'm allowed to give it an up.

Speaker 317:24

I thought she just asked you to drive her home, you know.

André Previn17:26

Oh, yes, I thought you meant her ultimate reaction, which is unbroadcastable, if there is such a word. But.

André Previn17:33

No, I had a lot of I met a lot of fascinating people, you know, Fred Astaire and Jean Kelly and uh really wonderful people who left their mark on me.

Presenter17:41

They of course were in their heyday and older older than you. I mean you would have been very young. It must feel like a lifetime ago when you talk about it now.

André Previn17:43

Yeah.

André Previn17:48

It no, not like a lifetime ago. It feels like another life, completely. It's very hard for me to remember walking into the studio gates every year in that blazing sunshine and ready to go to work on a film.

Presenter18:00

You were nominated, I think, for thirteen Oscars, but you certainly won four, didn't you, for Gigi and Pauli and Bernard?

André Previn18:05

And lost nine.

Presenter18:06

But I must ask you about your very first um original score, which you wrote when you were twenty, in nineteen forty nine, for a lassie film, wasn't it? Yes. Um when was the last time you heard it?

André Previn18:17

Then

André Previn18:18

Then it is curiously enough uh somebody told me it was out on the home video, but I haven't quite got the nerve to look for it. It was a film about the story of of a disappointed opera singer

André Previn18:31

who had had a loss in the family, and found

André Previn18:34

Her will to live back in the Ozark Mountains. Now, that is as much as I understood then and as much as I understand now. And I loved writing the music because she sang a bit.

André Previn18:46

And there was some incessant barking, and almost no one spoke, but it were there were great panoramas of mountains and meadows and a musician.

Presenter18:53

So the music was very important.

André Previn18:54

Yes, so even though I just wrote reams of music, which I was very happy to do.

Presenter18:59

But in the end, despite all all the Oscars and all the the stars and so on, you you you want it out because you've said that you got

Presenter19:07

Tired of doing something that didn't frighten you. I mean, you said you enjoy walking through the door every day, but then perhaps it did just become too matter of fact.

André Previn19:10

Do you enjoy walking through?

André Previn19:14

Well, I don't think you can do good work as an artist if the work doesn't worry you, if the work doesn't really actually frighten you.

André Previn19:21

And I got to the point with film music where it didn't really scare me,'cause I knew I could do it well enough to get by.

André Previn19:29

And I didn't like that. I think that when you when you are working with something as remarkable as music, I think the music has to frighten you. I think you have to be up for days and nights and weeks worrying about it.

André Previn19:40

And so I knew I couldn't achieve that in Hollywood, and so I got out.

Presenter19:44

Next record.

André Previn19:45

Next record is The Beginning of the Brahms' Fourth Symphony.

André Previn19:49

Again, I'll have to say the same thing that I said about the last record. It's a perfect piece. The Brahmsforth is the most remarkable structure. It is heartbreakingly beautiful, and it is also perfectly engineered piece. It is one of the great pieces of all time.

Presenter21:06

The opening of Brahm Symphony No. Four, played by the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Herbert von Karian. How difficult was it to throw off that Hollywood reputation when you began to try and create your classical one?

André Previn21:18

It didn't last too long because after a while even unimaginative critics get tired of criticizing you for the same reason, which is reasons they didn't like you for what you did years before. And I remember once I got a bad review because the man simply hadn't liked the concert that night, instead of hadn't liked it because of what I used to do. And I thought, well, now that I'm getting bad reviews on my own, I'm going to be a success.

Presenter21:43

Do you remember the moment when the call came from the L S O?

André Previn21:46

Yes, indeed.

André Previn21:47

I had been here, I'd made a couple of records with them, I loved the way they played, as indeed why shouldn't I?

André Previn21:53

And um

André Previn21:55

A a little delegation came round and they to the hotel I was in and they asked me whether I would consider being principal conductor.

Presenter22:02

Because it it they'd elected you themselves as a way. It was a very democratic business, wasn't it? This was the orchestra, members of the orchestra asking it.

André Previn22:05

Yes.

André Previn22:08

Absolutely. And I was completely flabbergasted and and said yes so quickly that that it must have shocked them.

Presenter22:09

Yeah, yeah.

Presenter22:15

So you came to live here, you you you bought a house in the countryside. You said earlier on that you had a feeling for English music. Did was it enhanced by that whole experience of English?

André Previn22:26

Oh yes. Yes, I think so. I think that there is a whole side of of English music that is enhanced by life here. I mean I think that for instance Vaughan Williams' music and uh a lot of Britain's music is translatable into into certain kinds of natural phenomena that you see here. I mean whether it's the sea with with Britain or the kind of rolling hills for Vaughan Williams or the the bustle for Walton or whatever. It's very indigenous to this country. And I had always liked the music. I liked the music and admired it and studied it long before I ever came here. So that uh w the appointment to the LSO simply meant that I was given indulgence.

André Previn23:04

to make this kind of predilection of mine public.

Presenter23:07

Let's have some more music.

André Previn23:09

The next record is something that that I've conducted, but I really chose it for

André Previn23:14

A combination of the the playing of the orchestra, the the playing of the cello soloist, who is Franz Bartolomay, who is the the principal cello of the Viana Philharmonic, and the piece, Richard Strauss's Don Quixote, Don Quixote, Don Quixote, I don't care where you come from. And it is a piece that I find quintessential Strauss.

André Previn23:33

and of the non-operatic straus the most beautiful.

Presenter24:37

The end of Richard Strauss's Don Quixote, played by the Vienna Philharmonic with the cellist Frantz Bartolome, conducted by, my costway, Andre Previn.

Presenter24:46

You said that the Vienna Philharmonic is the most beautiful sounding orchestra in the world, and I think many people would agree. Why do you think it is so rounded and so cohesive?

André Previn24:55

Well, they have a a a tradition of string playing and of horn playing which has gone back generations. There are principal players in that orchestra that are third generation.

André Previn25:05

you know, where their fathers and grandfathers already had those jobs. They do also work in the most beautiful hall in the world, the Musikfran. And so they make this a ravishing sound, especially for the repertoire that is undeniably theirs.

Presenter25:19

But you were mentioning to me earlier that that they the other day you played some Vaughan Williams with them and they'd not heard of Vaughan Williams before.

André Previn25:26

That's right. That's right, quite right. Uh I decided that with that string section, which is really quite inimitable, that it would be fun for me to do the Vaughan Williams Talus fantasy with them and one of my subscription concerts with in Vienna, and we did it. They didn't know it, but they played it very beautifully. They said to me, This Vaughan Williams, has he has he written anything else?

André Previn25:47

And then is Thomas Talis a contemporary of his? And I kept wincing and uh trying to explain no. But then, you know, if you went to the L S O and said shall we play something of Fitzner's or Franz Schmidt, they wouldn't know it either.

André Previn26:03

It it is continually astonishing to me the amount of geographical boundary that that exists with music, you know, where people know very well certain kinds of localized music and nothing of the other.

Presenter26:16

But going back to the Vienna Phil, you said that uh that they are the orchestra least suited to those early instrument frauds, which is uncharacteristically biting of you. What is it uh that you don't like about the attempt to play Mozart and Haydn, as the composers themselves might have heard it?

André Previn26:25

I'm carrying

André Previn26:34

Well, I tell you what, I first of all, the the word fraud is over the top, and I I will temper that. For me, the early m instrument movement is way overdone. I was talking about it with Kurt Mazur, who is of the old school German conductor and who is now the music director of the New York Philharmonic. And he said, No, I approve of all of that, but they must not tell me that the way that I want to hear Mozart and Haydn is wrong or that I shouldn't play it. And yet, even when the Vienna Philharmonic plays Mozart and Hayden, which they do with me very often, somebody in the press will say, if you still like this kind of Mozart and Haydn, it was gorgeous. I tend to get kind of crazed about it because I think that it is simply not a beautiful sound. They take such care and go to such trouble to make sure it's out of tune. I don't know. I don't condone it and I don't understand it.

Presenter27:27

Record number six.

André Previn27:29

Mozart's G minor Symphony, number 40, and this is conducted by uh a man who for Mozart was my idol, Bruno Walter.

André Previn27:37

And he most certainly would not, even if he'd had access in those days to the old instruments, he wouldn't have bothered, because he wanted it to be as beautiful as possible at all times, because he thought that Mozart, who was an angel,

André Previn27:51

would have deserved that.

Presenter28:45

The opening of Mozart's Symphony No. forty in G minor, played by the Columbia Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Bruno Walter. I have to ask you, although it was many, many years ago, that very famous appearance of yours on Morecambe and Wise, um, as mister Andrew Preview, I think they insisted on calling you.

André Previn28:57

Yeah.

Presenter29:01

With with Mr. Eric Morcombe at the piano, Grieg's piano concerto. D have you ever watched it since?

André Previn29:07

I watched it once since I was given a knighthood, and when the British Ambassador to the United States gave me a party for that, at the end of his speech he said, I have a surprise for you, he said to me, and he ran for this august assemblage. He ran the Morecambe and Wise Show, which was extremely good natured of him and very funny. And I saw it for the first time in many, many years, you know, in twenty-five years. And I did love both Eric and Ernie very much, and I thought it was funny.

Presenter29:36

You were very good. You were very straight faced. You never once sort of winked at the camera.

André Previn29:41

Noel, Eric was very smart. He said, Have you ever done anything like this before? and I said, No, of course not. And he said, Well, the trick is that the three of us must be the only people up here who do not think this is funny. We have to play this absolutely straight. If you if you begin to intimate that you know this is funny, it won't be funny.

Presenter29:59

Okay.

André Previn29:59

And I took his advice and had a wonderful time with him.

Presenter30:02

You spent 25 years as a musical director of one orchestra or another, but these days you're freelance, you go where you fancy or where you're invited. Do you prefer that?

André Previn30:12

There are many things about being a music director that I miss, but on the other hand, to be freelance and to to go to the great orchestras of the world, which I am very lucky in being able to do, is great fun, and also it means that I don't have to worry about fundraising or ladies' committees or shop stewards.

Presenter30:33

Next record.

André Previn30:35

The next record is uh one of the interludes from.

André Previn30:38

Britain's Peter Grimes. It's a stunning piece of work and uh

André Previn30:44

Uh very, very dramatically moving and and emotionally touching.

André Previn30:48

And uh my admiration of it never diminishes.

Presenter31:51

Part of the first interlude of Benjamin Britton's Peter Grimes, played by the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, conducted by Benjamin Britton.

Presenter31:59

On the personal front now, Andre Previn, you are married to your fourth wife, Heather, and you have been for fourteen years now.

Presenter32:06

Children, you've got a young son, haven't you?

André Previn32:08

Yes, we have a twelve-year-old son.

Presenter32:10

So how many children does that make that you have altogether?

André Previn32:13

Uh four sons and three daughters.

Presenter32:17

Mm-hmm.

André Previn32:17

and my adopted uh Vietnamese daughters, which adds another three.

Presenter32:21

Right.

André Previn32:21

So there we go.

Presenter32:22

And are any of the children musical?

André Previn32:24

My youngest, my twelve year old Lucas, started playing the guitar, and he turned out to be really gifted for it. So he first played classical guitar, and then he wanted an electric guitar, and now, although he flirts around with rock and all that, he is a really good guitarist.

Presenter32:39

So he might be the one of all of them to follow professionally.

André Previn32:41

The colour.

Presenter32:42

And you live about an hour's drive out of New York in in Bedford Hills, although Heather, your wife, i is English. Did did you become disenchanted with this country for some reason?

André Previn32:46

Mm-hmm.

André Previn32:51

Only professionally it was too impractical.

André Previn32:54

And also where we lived it was ravishingly beautiful, but it took longer and longer and longer to get into London. And so I thought it was wiser of me to find a house in the country in America and come to England a great many times.

André Previn33:07

a year, which I've done, and it really has turned out just from a point of mechanics to be a lot easier.

Presenter33:14

Tell me about your last record.

André Previn33:15

As you know, I'm a participant in a great deal of chamber music every year, and I find that a complete necessity for my well-being. And this is a string quartet, which is of course the kind of chamber music that I cannot take part in, but it is the greatest part of chamber music, and for me at least, the greatest string quartet ever written is the Beethoven Opus 131 and number 14 in the C sharp minor. And this is one of the movements played by the Albenberg Quartet.

Presenter34:39

The opening of the first movement of Beethoven's string quartet number fourteen in C sharp minor, opus one three one, played by the Albenberg quartet. Well, you've complained that eight records aren't enough, Andrea, um but now you've got to say if you could only take one, which would it be?

André Previn34:53

If I only took one.

Presenter34:54

Mm.

André Previn34:55

Of these?

Presenter34:56

I'd love to have another one.

André Previn34:56

Of these eight.

André Previn34:58

Uh I guess I would take the Mozart uh symphony number forty.

Presenter35:02

The Bruna Velta.

André Previn35:03

Yeah.

Presenter35:04

What about your book?

André Previn35:06

Well, the complete short stories about Chekhov, that would be nice to have. That's a lot to read and it never fails to be moving.

Presenter35:12

What about your luxury?

André Previn35:14

Well, uh I said I wanted a piano and uh I was told that I couldn't have a piano because it had to be a practicality.

Presenter35:22

Well, you can you can have a piano as long as you promise not to shelter underneath it. I think that's the rule. I haven't got the rules with it. I can't sit under it.

André Previn35:22

When you

André Previn35:27

Oh, is that the way it was? I can't sit under it. Oh, I think that's an easy promise to make. Yes, I won't sit under it, but I would like a piano.

Presenter35:33

And we'd never know if you did anyway, would we?

André Previn35:35

Uh

Presenter35:36

Andre Previn, Sir Andre Previn, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you very much.

Speaker 235:50

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.