André Previn

Previn sees jazz and classical music as entirely distinct from each other: "The two things have nothing in common," he said in a 1991 interview. "There will always be people who try to force the issue into having one depend on the other, but I don't think one has anything to do with the other."

Most recently, Previn has even returned, in a manner of speaking, to Hollywood. For a 2002 recording on the Deutsche Grammophon label, he conducted the London Symphony playing Erich Korngold's music for the classic movies "The Sea Hawk," "Captain Blood," "The Prince and the Pauper" and "The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex."

The knighted conductor

As a conductor, Previn is best known for his interpretations of British and Russian symphonic works, among them recordings of 20th century English composer William Turner Walton's oratorio "Belshazzar's Feast" and Sergey Rachmaninoff's "The Bells," for which he won Grammys in 1973 and 1976. Once described as having a "special feel for English music and for the American symphonists," Previn was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1996 for his contribution to Anglo-American cultural relations and to music in Great Britain.

Previn's compositions include a piano sonata for Vladimir Ashkenazy, a cello sonata for Yo-Yo Ma and songs for mezzo soprano Janet Baker and sopranos Sylvia McNair and Barbara Bonney. His settings of poems by Toni Morrison, evocatively titled "Honey and Rue," were written for soprano Kathleen Battle, who recorded them for Deutsche Grammophon in 1995. His first opera, "A Streetcar Named Desire," with a libretto by Philip Littell based on the play by Tennessee Williams, premiered at the San Francisco Opera in 1998 under Previn's direction and with soprano Renée Fleming in the role of Blanche DuBois.

Praising the composer's "fine ear for voices," a "New York Times" reviewer noted the "angry clashes of harmony and key, many Straussian gestures, sweet-as-honey popular melody and the kind of corporate noodling and mumbling among the strings native to a Ligeti or a Penderecki." Other reviewers heard "the languorous, chromatic influence" of modernist Viennese composer Alban Berg. Previn himself has called his music "conservative and traditional" and said his writing for the opera was influenced by British composer Benjamin Britten.

Golden triumphs in his golden years

In 1998 -- high time, one is tempted to say -- Previn was one of the recipients of the Kennedy Center Honors for lifetime achievement in Washington, D.C.. But, now in his early '70s, he doesn't seem to be slowing down in the least. He won a Grammy that same year for a recording with violinist Gil Shaham of chamber music by American composers (including himself). A collection of his latest compositions, including "The Giraffes Go to Hamburg," written for Fleming, and three song settings of Emily Dickinson poems, written for Bonney, was released by Deutsche Grammophon in April 2001.

Commissioned by the Boston Symphony, his violin concerto for Anne-Sophie Mutter premiered in March 2002, and he is currently working on a second opera, based on the novel "Silk" by Alessandro Baricco, as well as a piece for Bonney and the Emerson String Quartet and a song cycle for tenor Anthony Dean Griffey. His four-year term as music director of the Oslo Philharmonic starts in the 2002-2003 concert season, and he is looking forward to touring and recording the complete Mozart piano trios with Mutter (since August 2002 his fifth wife) and cellist Lynn Harrell.

Gretchen Wiesehan