Top 29 Quotes & Sayings by Andre Previn

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a German musician Andre Previn.

Last updated on November 23, 2024.

André George Previn was a German-American pianist, composer, and conductor. His career had three major genres: Hollywood, jazz, and classical music. On each he achieved success, and the latter two were part of his life until the end. In movies, he arranged and composed music. In jazz, he was a celebrated trio pianist, a piano-accompanist to singers of standards, and pianist-interpreter of songs from the "Great American Songbook". In classical music, he also worked as a pianist but gained television fame as a conductor, and during his last thirty years created his legacy as a composer of art music.

German - Musician | April 6, 1929 - February 28, 2019

Source: Wikipedia

It's been thrown up to me most of my life: Why don't I just concentrate on conducting or composing or my own playing or on jazz?

Andre Previn

I finally wasn't interested in writing music that played while actors talked.

Andre Previn

People who don't do jazz think it's black magic. But really, it's just a matter of getting used to it. It's fun to gamble. The trick is not to fall back on the things you've done before.

Andre Previn

The thing is that I'm naturally curious about a lot of different disciplines in music, and I enjoy doing them. And as long as people are nice enough to let me, I'll keep on trying.

Andre Previn

I've had the healthy and sobering experience of constantly working with music that is invariably better than any performance of it can be.

Andre Previn

I admire Elliott Carter endlessly. But I have no ambitions to emulate him.

Andre Previn

I remain extraordinarily proud of the Vaughan Williams symphonies I recorded with the LSO, and in the 1980s and '90s, I made an almost complete cycle of orchestral works by Richard Strauss with the Vienna Philharmonic.

Andre Previn

I run around so much that I finally reasoned that composing is the one musical endeavour which you can do anywhere, anytime.

Andre Previn

I don't write things that are wildly abstractly atonal.

Andre Previn

When you're working with music that is invariably better than you are, it's difficult to become swell-headed.

Andre Previn

At MGM, you knew you were going to be working next year; you knew you were going to get paid. But I was too ambitious musically to settle for it. And I wanted to gamble with whatever talent I might have had.

Andre Previn

I stuck around in Hollywood for too long. I was there a long time, and when I left, I was smart enough to realise that what I was leaving was not just the movie business. I wanted to get rid of the whole atmosphere.

Andre Previn

I found that jazz musicians, possibly more than their classical counterparts, wear long-standing friendships easily and gracefully.

Andre Previn

Elliott Carter does not write the kind of music that the kids go off to school whistling.

Andre Previn

A Beethoven symphony should be rehearsed like chamber music, only for a lot more people.

Andre Previn

There's a small group of music critics in the States who will forgive you anything - jazz, a long prison term, or what have you - anything but scoring a Hollywood musical.

Andre Previn

I'm on very good terms with all my former wives.

Andre Previn

I used to set myself little challenges to make the work more interesting.

Andre Previn

Music critics have made it quite clear that any composer who ever contributed a four-bar jingle to a film was to be referred to as a 'Hollywood composer' from then on, even if the rest of his output were to consist solely of liturgical organ sonatas.

Andre Previn

I don't ever consciously change gears when I play jazz or classical. It's all music.

Andre Previn

When I composed, I heard my music played by the orchestra within days of completion of the score. No master at a conservatory, no matter how revered, can teach as much by verbal criticism as can a cold and analytical hearing of one's own music being played.

Andre Previn

I absolutely insist upon adequate rehearsal time - particularly for the pieces that orchestras know best. Because there, the tendency is not to take them apart - rediscover them - and you must.

Andre Previn

I have a great many shortcomings, but writing for something on time has never bothered me.

Andre Previn

I don't even have a cell phone. I don't know how they work.

Andre Previn

John Williams is, without question, talented. He writes very good scores and very good melodies and all that.

Andre Previn

You can chase a Beethoven symphony all your life and never catch up.

Andre Previn

There are a million things in music I know nothing about. I just want to narrow down that figure.

Andre Previn

The basic difference between classical music and jazz is that in the former the music is always graver than its performance - whereas the way jazz is performed is always more important than what is being played.

Andre Previn

If you're going to do good work, the work has to scare you.

Andre Previn

Top 29 Quotes & Sayings by Andre Previn

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