April 22, 2008
As I commented last time, it is unlikely that anyone has ever better exemplified excellence in both classical music and jazz than 78-year-old composer, conductor and pianist André Previn.
Previn’s discography numbers well into three figures and spans more than 50 years of recordings for all major labels. In addition to his roles as pianist, conductor, arranger, and orchestrator, Previn has also become a significant composer of no small acclaim. Multiple awards have documented his stature across the musical spectrum. During his career, he has been nominated for 16 Oscars and won four. He has been awarded ten Grammy Awards: two for Soloist or Small Group Jazz Performance; two for Best Sound Track Album; one for Best Orchestral Performance; two for Best Choral Performance; and one each for Best Classical Crossover Album, Best Chamber Music Performance, and Best Instrumental Soloist (for his Violin Concerto, recorded by Anne-Sophie Mutter). His “Triolet for Brass” (a particular favorite of mine) was recorded by the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble on its 1987 release PJBE Finale. In 1996 he was appointed an honorary Knight of the Order of the British Empire. His first opera, Streetcar Named Desire, premiered in 1998 in San Francisco and was subsequently broadcast on PBS and recorded by Deutsche Grammophon; it has been awarded the Grand Prix du Disque. Previn has been awarded both Austria’s and Germany’s Cross of the Order of Merit, as well as a 1998 Kennedy Center Honor for Lifetime Achievement. Musical America has named him Musician of the Year, and in 2005, he was awarded the Glenn Gould Prize.
In the late 1980s, André Previn returned to jazz, one of his first loves. With guitarist Mundell Lowe and bassist Ray Brown, he formed the André Previn Jazz Trio, which toured Japan, North America, and Europe in 1992 and 1993. He likewise resumed recording: Old Friends in 1992, and What Headphones? in 1993, which expanded his trio with the addition of Warren Vaché, Grady Tate, Jim Pugh, and LACO’s own Richard Todd. He also returned to touring as a solo jazz pianist, as he had in the 1950s, and as a duo with bassist David Finck.
Previn most recently demonstrated that he is still at the top of his form as a jazz improviser with his October 2007 Emarcy release, Alone: Ballads for Solo Piano. The disc features ten inimitable jazz interpretations from the Great American Song Book: Matt Dennis’ “Angel Eyes”; Cole Porter’s “What Is This Thing Called Love” and “Night and Day”; Richard Rodgers’ “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was,” “Ship Without a Sail,” and “It Might As Well Be Spring”; Vernon Duke’s “I Can’t Get Started”; Kurt Weill’s “My Ship”; and Hoagy Carmichael’s “Skylark,” in addition to three of Previn’s own tunes: “André’s Blues,” “Darkest before the Dawn” and “You’re Gonna Hear from Me.”
Unlike some jazz performances of old standards, in which the primary theme is nearly overwhelmed by riffs, substitutions, and embellishments, however, Previn treats the original melodies of each song with respect bordering on reverence. (Some exploratory polytonality in “Night and Day” and “Skylark,” a number of tasty modulations, and some delicious re-harmonization of “Bewitched” are about as far out as it gets.) As Previn told Barrymore Laurence Scherer in a cultural conversation in The Wall Street Journal, “That hard-core jazz style is wonderful, too, but I think that in slow ballads, it’s different, especially the ones I chose—the melodies are so good to begin with that I don’t like to ring changes on them until they’re unrecognizable.”
When Chris Roberts, chairman of Decca Label Group for the U.S., approached him to record a solo piano CD, Previn was initially hesitant. “I told them, ‘I have to be honest with you; the style I would play in is kind of forgotten today, and it’s possible that no one would buy it.’” Roberts wasn’t having any of it. “So, I agreed to a recording date. Then, all I did was give them a list of 50 tunes that I quite like. And they got me 50 lead sheets, as it were, all placed on a table next to the piano. I would pick up the top sheet and begin to play it, and if I couldn’t think of anything to make of it instantly, I’d put it down and pick up the next one in the pile and proceed with that. So I made this CD in one afternoon, with every track done in one ‘take.’”
Although none of the renditions are “hard-core jazz,” to use Previn’s words, the CD is nonetheless exclusively improvisational; as he says, “If you’re going to make anything even resembling jazz or related to it, the music should be totally improvised.” For the New York-based recording session, Previn played a Viennese-made Bösendorfer piano; the tone of these instruments is characterized by a warm, rich fullness. As a result, the performance has a lushness that is remarkable. Previn again: “These are lovely, soft songs. Moreover, the great advantage to playing alone is that there are no harmonic restrictions—I don’t have to match what I’m doing to what another player is doing. So I had some fun.”
Previn was asked by Scherer whether he would play any of these pieces again the same way he does on the CD. “No. And I can prove that, because I did a jazz concert at Tanglewood, and Dave Finck, my bass player, suggested that I do some of the things on ‘Alone.’ And I had to look them up to see what they were, because I had forgotten what I had done.
“Of course, if you are thinking in a general way, all of jazz performance contains certain elements of memory—certain patterns that work in different pieces, certain tricks, if you like. But if you’re playing with another musician whose creativity challenges you, or if you’re playing all alone, there’s more improvisation than at any other time. And for someone in my profession, it’s a great luxury to spend all night improvising.”
Discussing these songs, Previn indulged in a bit of reminiscence about working “with a lot of the really best songwriters during my old MGM days. And some of them greatly disliked jazz improvising. Cole Porter, for instance: I was about to start writing the arrangements for the film of ‘Kiss Me Kate,’ into which they had interpolated his song ‘From This Moment On.’ And Cole said to me, ‘Oh, by the way, there’s a record of that song by Woody Herman’s orchestra. And it contains everything I hate about big-band writing—it destroys the melody, it destroys the rhythm, the harmonies are all weird, the tempo is insane. But I know all your arrangements for movies and they’re so wonderfully theatrical that I don’t need to fear.’ And I said, ‘Thank you, Cole,’ and I never told him that I had made that arrangement for Woody Herman!”