Andre Previn interview

By Geoff Edgers, Globe Staff | September 28, 2008

He's approaching 80, but Andre Previn shows no signs of slowing down. He continues to perform and conduct all over the world. This Thursday, he'll come to town, where the Boston Symphony Orchestra will premiere "Owls," a 15- to 20-minute tone poem that he promises has "no particular profundity about it." (The program, which also features Stravinsky's Violin Concerto and Beethoven's Symphony No. 4, continues Friday, Saturday, and next Tuesday.) Previn spoke by phone from his home in New York.

Q. What is "Owls"?

A. I know you're looking for some amazing explanation but there's nothing profound about it. The reason for the title is very simple in that I lived in England in a house for 21 years and we had woods in back of the house and one morning I was walking along and I saw under a tree a pair of baby owls that had fallen out of a tree. They were really tiny. I put them into a kind of blanket or towel and took them back to the house and I called the whatever the equivalent is in England to the ASPCA. They came and they took them and did something quite wonderful. When the owls were cured, they brought them back and they let them out of the little enclosure . . . in the exact same spot I had found them in. They took a look around and flew off. I then noticed after that, that a surprising amount of the animals we saw from day to day were in pairs. Two deer. Two foxes and two rabbits. I remember when I first bought the house I was down at the village pub and somebody came to me and said, "I am the master of the hunt and you have 18 acres on there and you wouldn't mind if we went onto your property." "No," I said, "I wouldn't mind if you wouldn't mind if I stood in the woods and shot you."

Anyway, the whole point was that these two little owls are kind of a nice memory for me. And I thought of pairs of woodwinds. And just wrote a piece that's got no particular profundity about it.

Q. It almost sounds as if you're trying to downplay the piece so we don't expect much.

A. It's not a huge piece, first of all. It's a short piece. And when they first commissioned it they said, this is not supposed to be a big, knock 'em dead piece. But more of a nocturne of sorts. I've been writing more in the last 10 years than I have in the last 30 years before that.

Q. Is the process of writing a commission different from the process of writing on your own?

A. Yes, you get paid for it.

Q. What about pressure and deadlines?

A. Well, yes, they do give you a deadline that they hope for but that has never bothered me. I have a great many shortcomings but writing for something on time has never bothered me.

Q. How long ago was this experience with these baby owls?

A. About 15 years.

Q. What made it stick in your mind?

A. I haven't the faintest idea. I just remembered it. I've always been fond of owls.

Q. Why?

A. I don't know why. Some people are fond of poodles.

Q. I've seen you describe yourself as a conservative composer. Explain that.

A. It's very rooted in tonality. I don't write things that are wildly abstractly atonal. The people who don't like that use the word conservative or old-fashioned as a pejorative. The others who like it use it as a compliment

Q. Is it this idea of being more accessible or melody based?

A. I just find that certain pieces are not rooted in tonality. You've had a lot of music in Boston lately by Elliott Carter. That's not conservative. That's not tonal. I don't write that way. I wish I could but I can't.

Q. In recent years, James Levine's been programming a lot of living composers. Elliott Carter being the most notable. There has been some grumbling that he should be more crowd-pleasing. Any thoughts?

A. I admire Elliott Carter endlessly. But I have no ambitions to emulate him. Do you remember that very short opera he wrote? . . . I adored that. There are certain things of his I find very tough going. But there are a lot of non-tonal composers I do enjoy. There's a German composer Wolfgang Rihm, for example.

Q. >What about this mix of excitement and grumbling from the BSO audience?

A. That would be no matter what art form you pursue. Jimmy Levine's predilection for that kind of music, especially for Mr. Carter's, is nothing short of admirable. Elliott Carter does not write the kind of music that the kids go off to school whistling.

Q. You're almost 80 now. I wonder if there's a sense of winding down the intense touring schedule? A desire to stay home more?

A. One of the reasons I love to compose is because I can compose at home. But if I conduct or play I have to go to wherever I'm conducting or playing. I just came back from making some records in Vienna and I was in Munich before that and Rome before that and now I'm here [New York] for a week and then come to Boston. It's a hard life in a way, all that traveling.

Q. But I assume, without asking you to reveal your bank balance, that you don't have to travel so much.

A. It depends on how much of the American banks I have to pay back.

Q. So will this change?

A. I'm getting pretty old. Even if I wanted to, I couldn't. I will cut down on the concert travel and concentrate more on the composing.

Q. You and Anna-Sophie Mutter divorced two years ago yet you still collaborate musically. How has that dynamic changed?

A. First of all, it wasn't that many years ago. And then we are each other's closest friends. I'm conducting with her. We're doing a tour of Germany together. We work together all the time.

Q. But that's not common, to be so close to your ex-wife.

A. No, it's not common and probably some people are surprised and some people don't know how we can do it but there's just nobody we'd rather be with.

Q. So why not get married for a sixth time?

A. Pretend you didn't ask that.