Andre Previn

This, one of Tippett's earliest acknowledged works, is one of his most popular. The music relates the true story of a young German Jew who, terrified and enraged at the treatment of his mother, kills a Nazi officer and touches off a violent pogrom. Tippett adopts the structure of Bach's Passions, in which arias alternate with choruses and Lutheran hymns (chorales), although in place of the chorales Tippett substitutes magnificently moving Negro spirituals. "A Child of our Time" offers music of rage, poignancy, and deep compassion. As the title itself implies, it is both specific to a certain time and place, and universal as well. No lover of classical music can afford to ignore it.

André Previn - Previn At Sunset (1945-1946) {1201 Music-Black Lion 9029-2 rel 2001}
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© 1945-46, 2001 1201 Music / Black Lion | 9029-2
Jazz / Cool / West Coast Jazz / Standards / Show Tunes / Trad Jazz / Piano

André Previn was just 16 years old when he recorded the earliest numbers on Previn at Sunset, but he was already a brilliant pianist and a busy arranger at the MGM studios. Most (but not quite all) of the recordings that he made for the Sunset and Monarch labels, among the earliest in his career, are here. A major swing stylist who had not yet been affected by bop, Previn is heard on some unaccompanied solos; in three different trios with such sidemen as guitarists Dave Barbour or Irving Ashby, bassists John Simmons, Eddie Safranski, or Red Callender, and drummer Lee Young; and a couple of jam tunes ("All the Things You Are" and "I Found a New Baby") with a sextet also either Buddy Childers or Howard McGhee on trumpet, altoist Willie Smith, and Vido Musso on tenor. The small group swing performances are quite enjoyable, and the teenage pianist easily keeps up with the other, more famous players.

André Previn's 1975 EMI recording of Carmina Burana sounds better than ever in this new transfer. The analog tape hiss has been tamed, yet there's more "air" between the notes and a greater sense of dynamic and timbral definition. Engineering-wise, the mid-70s were golden years for EMI, and the rhythmic verve, dramatic momentum, and unbuttoned joy that Previn and his brilliant forces project still pack a sonic wallop. The soloists especially are outstanding. Thomas Allen navigates Orff's cruelly high tessitura with no effort, and Sheila Armstrong wraps her warm, flexible pipes around "In trutina mentis dubia" to moving effect.

Here is an example of crossover marketing '90s style - a classical conductor/jazz pianist signed to the classical Deutsche Grammophon label, whose previous jazz album issued on DG got lost in the shops and whose next disc was prudently shifted over to PolyGram's jazz line, Verve. The occasion was a rare jazz concert in Vienna's legendary, acoustically marvelous symphony hall, the Musikvereinsaal, where Previn - who normally leads the Vienna Philharmonic there - enraptured the Viennese with his piano/guitar/bass trio. According to Previn, one member of the Philharmonic was astonished to learn that the music was made on the wing ("You improvised in public?!," he exclaimed). Well, it wasn't that big a deal for Previn and his usual cohorts Mundell Lowe (guitar) and Ray Brown (bass), who turn in an amiable collection of mostly vintage standards that they probably know in their sleep…

Although André Previn had not recorded a regular jazz album in 27 years at this point in time (discounting a pair of Itzhak Perlman sessions featuring Previn's compositions), the great majority of the performances on this trio set with guitarist Joe Pass and bassist Ray Brown are first takes. Previn took time off from his busy schedule in the classical music world to return briefly to jazz, his first love. The results are often magical. Previn, Pass and Brown play together as if they had been touring as a group for years. The pianist is generous with solo space and Pass' solos are sometimes exhilarating. For Previn, it is as if the previous three decades did not occur for he plays in a style little changed from 1960, displaying an Oscar Peterson influence mixed in with touches of Lennie Tristano and Bill Evans.

Known as a successful classical conductor, jazz pianist, and composer of jazz, classical, and film music, André Previn has frequently bridged the gap between popular and so-called "serious" music, and in doing so broadened the horizons of both. A German-American who fled Nazi Germany with his family in his youth, he went on to win four Academy Awards, all for his work on film musicals in late '50s and '60s, including his adaptation of My Fair Lady (1964).

The last of a series of showtune albums recorded by the trio of pianist Andre Previn, bassist Red Mitchell and drummer Shelly Manne finds the all-star group focusing on the music of West Side Story (Previn and Manne alternated leadership, and it was the drummer's good fortune to have the famous My Fair Lady album under his own name). This CD reissue has eight of the main themes from the famous musical, including "I Feel Pretty," "Maria" and "America." As usual, the melodies are treated respectfully yet swingingly, and Andre Previn in particular excels in this setting.