UK Edition
Oscar-winning composer André Previn dies at 89
Award-winning pianist and composer André Previn has died, aged 89.
Previn's management confirmed to the BBC that he had passed away on Thursday, at his home in New York.
Previn won four Oscars for his film scores – Gigi (1958), Porgy & Bess (1959), Irma la Douce (1963) and My Fair Lady (1964) – as well as 10 Grammys for his other recordings.
Born in Berlin in 1929, Previn's family left for Paris in 1938 before moving on to Los Angeles.
He began working on music for films while still a teenager, beginning with The Sun Comes Up in 1949. A wide-ranging talent, he composed songs for jazz bands and classical sonatas for chamber groups, premiering his final Orchestral composition, Almost an Overture, in 2017.
Previn served in the Korean War, and was said to have been digging a latrine trench for the troops when he heard the news that he had received his first Oscar nomination, for Three Little Words (1950).
He was married five times, most recently in 2002 at the age of 72 to the then 39-year-old German violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, with whom he retained a close friendship. The couple continued to perform together after their divorce in 2006.
His previous marriages were to the jazz singer Betty Bennett, songwriter Dory Langan, actress Mia Farrow – who married him two years after her divorce from Frank Sinatra – and Heather Sneddon.
He had seven children, including two adopted children with Farrow: Lark Song and Soon-Yi. However, Previn publicly disowned Soon-Yi, who is now married to the director Woody Allen, with whom Farrow had been having an affair before she divorced the composer in 1980. "She does not exist", Previn said of Soon-Yi in 2013.
In Britain, Previn became a popular television personality, hosting the shows Meet André Previn and André Previn's Music Night. His guest appearance in a 1971 Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show was considered one of the double act's funniest moments. When he chastised Morecambe for his botched rendition of Grieg's Piano Concerto, the comedian claimed he had been playing "all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order".
Writer and broadcaster Stephen Fry paid tribute to Previn on Twitter. "What a life," he wrote. "All those Oscars, awards and achievements and yet most of my generation will always think of him as Andre Preview, conducting Eric Morecambe. He probably wouldn't mind..."