André Previn

[Barbirollians]

Can you imagine a programme about classical music having the impact of Andre Previn’s music night nowadays ? Big TV audiences and LSO tickets like gold dust . Rattle and the CBSO in his younger days I suppose might have done.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Previn recorded two albums of popular songs with Sylvia McNair - one devoted to Jerome Kern the other to Harold Arlen. The latter is, to my ear, the more successful as Arlen's songs better lend themselves to the jazzy treatment. For his solo in 'The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea', Previn wittily offers a bitonal boogie in the keys of C and F# - keys a tritone apart (diabolus in musica). A bit of an in-joke, perhaps, but it always makes me smile.

He was one of the all time great jazz vocal accompanists. Up there with Bill Evans. What a musician he was,

[Ein Heldenleben]

Can you imagine a programme about classical music having the impact of Andre Previn’s music night nowadays ? Big TV audiences and LSO tickets like gold dust . Rattle and the CBSO in his younger days I suppose might have done.

…..seems like a different world . ITV showing Glyndebourne in peak time , Granada showing Shakespeare and Andrew Previn’s Music Night going out at 9,25 on BBC One after the news . What has happened to our culture ? And what further depths are there to plumb?

[Petrushka]

…..seems like a different world . ITV showing Glyndebourne in peak time , Granada showing Shakespeare and Andrew Previn’s Music Night going out at 9,25 on BBC One after the news . What has happened to our culture ? And what further depths are there to plumb?

Also opera on Channel 4! I remember a Mozart Requiem (Colin Davis/Bavarian Radio SO) being broadcast on Channel 4 at 3pm on Good Friday 1987.

Does anyone else remember the occasion when BBC2 completely changed their Saturday evening schedule at very short notice to take in a performance of Verdi's Stiffelio live from Covent Garden? And that was on the strength of some ecstatic reviews, apparently.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Also opera on Channel 4! I remember a Mozart Requiem (Colin Davis/Bavarian Radio SO) being broadcast on Channel 4 at 3pm on Good Friday 1987.

Does anyone else remember the occasion when BBC2 completely changed their Saturday evening schedule at very short notice to take in a performance of Verdi's Stiffelio live from Covent Garden? And that was on the strength of some ecstatic reviews, apparently.

Had one of our series bumped out of the BBC 2 schedule for a live relay of La Traviata in the famous Solti / Georghiu debut.
. I was one of the few secretly exultant. (It the added benefit of giving me a week extra to produce another epic.)
A decision made by one Alan Yentob who’d seen it. Just wouldn’t happen now though the Beeb is full of opera lovers,

[Barbirollians]

That was a Thursday night I think in 1994 - blew me away watching it .