THE SECOND COMING OF PREVIN

Andre Previn comes to the door of his new home, just north of Olympic Boulevard in Beverly Hills. He doesn’t dispatch an aide, maid or secretary. Wearing a burgundy sports shirt with a Tanglewood emblem, burgundy running shoes and khaki slacks that attest dramatically to recent weight loss, he looks a bit shell-shocked. Ever diplomatic, he chooses to swap the Tanglewood shirt for something more neutral when a photographer materializes.

He had arrived here just the day before, having completed an arduous and, it is reported, highly successful round of concerts in London and Salzburg. His wife and youngest son still lag behind somewhere, en route to this latest of promised professional lands.

His archetypal Southern California abode is still a muddled haven for crates, cardboard boxes, unpacked cases and displaced furniture. The place is airy, casually elegant, sensible, outfitted both with a small backyard pool and an indoor Jacuzzi. It seems modest by Hollywood-superstar standards.

“I could have bought all of Liverpool for what we paid for this,” Previn muses. “And I don’t even know what to make of the Jacuzzi.”

The ever-affable maestro looks considerably younger than his 56 years, despite jet-lag eyes accenting a gaunt countenance. He has left one habitat but, quite clearly, isn’t settled yet in his brave new world.

He sips coffee out of a mug, munches a cookie or two, paces in front of a half-empty record cabinet. He perches from time to time atop the cabinet, surveys the scene uneasily, disappears long enough to fetch a photo of the youngest Previn in a water-winged bathing suit, asks where he might find a good toy shop and, when pressed, contemplates the newest phase in his convoluted professional evolution.

Previn, in case you’ve been out of the city in recent years, took a rather circuitous route from the MGM lot to the Music Center. After exhausting the merriment of movie music and the joys of jazz, the former Wunderkind de-emphasized his pop involvements and his piano career in order to make the rounds of the great symphony orchestras of America and Europe. He has held major posts in Houston, London and Pittsburgh, appeared as revered guest with the orchestras of Vienna, Berlin, Amsterdam, Paris and Boston, even found time in between to become a television personality and composer equally adept at show tunes and concertos.

Now he is bracing himself for the big homecoming. His stint in Pittsburgh has come to an unhappy end, an end hastened by a network of acrimonious clashes with the orchestra management. The Los Angeles era of Carlo Maria Giulini here is emphatically over. The interim era predicated on a parade of uneven guest conductors is over too.

Previn’s back, and the Philharmonic has him.

Our Philharmonic is making a big, splashy, 40-gun fuss over the second coming of Andre. Street banners bearing the almost enigmatic slogan “WELCOME PREVIN” are cropping up all over town. A conspicuous example spans Fairfax Avenue between the Farmer’s Daughter Motel and CBS.

A broad-based publicity campaign--actually it is rather muted by the worst tinseltown standards--heralds “new power, dimension and vitality.” An ad in the sports pages exhorts the fan to “BE THERE WHEN IT ALL BEGINS.” The source for all the vaunted excitement is a purportedly unique combination of elements: “THE LOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC AND ANDRE PREVIN-- TOGETHER .”

It is as if this were a deathless union to rank in eternity with Jack and Jill, Romeo and Juliet, Barrett and Browning, Abelard and Heloise, Stanley and Livingston, Abbott and Costello, Fonteyn and Nureyev, Barnum and Bailey. . . .

Before he executes his first public downbeat, Previn has been scheduled to endure an onslaught of print interviews and a blitz of television exposures in addition to the usual trial by press conference. The Fourth Estate even has been invited to attend his first rehearsal with the Philharmonic.

A special “Welcome Previn” Concert has been scheduled at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion for Oct. 13. Since the tickets, all free, already have been distributed, the music will be beamed electronically to an overflow audience expected to gather on the Music Center plaza.

Previn’s opening concert with the Philharmonic, Oct. 10, will be recycled on tape as the climax of a PBS special on KCET Channel 28, Dec. 11 at 9 p.m. A brass ensemble will make festive music outside the Pavilion before the celebrations begin (the celebrations begin, appropriately enough, with a piece called “Celebration” by the Pulitzer Prize winner Ellen Taaffe Zwilich). After the final cadence of the Prokofiev Fifth Symphony, the outgoing audience will be assaulted with a fireworks show worthy, no doubt, of the bourgeois gentilhomme.

Still suffering the slings and arrows of hasty international travel, Previn doesn’t seem too pleased when he hears these details.

“That sort of thing won’t happen here a lot,” he avers. “I’m not coming here to do this. What am I, crazy? A campaign like this sounds like it is trying to enforce an image. I loathe that word. The image doesn’t even fit.

“I know this is a hotbed of hyperbole. The fact that they are pleased to see me here is gratifying. The fact that the greetings are expressed in such a blatant way has, thank goodness, no bearing on how I conduct Mozart.

“Of course, these marketing ploys are becoming fairly standard everywhere. In Salzburg this summer, every taxi carried a big placard. There were Jose van Dam taxis, Jessye Norman taxis, Riccardo Muti taxis. When I arrived at the airport, as luck would have it, the porter got me an Andre Previn taxi. I was aghast. I didn’t know if I should get in.

“I can’t believe the management here wants all that brouhaha. I suppose I should be flattered. But there are limits. I certainly can’t have the press at my first rehearsal. They can’t be there. It would be an insult to the orchestra. They will object. They will be right to object. Anyhow, I don’t rehearse in front of journalists.

“Try to ignore the wisps of smoke emanating from my ears,” he says. He is only half smiling.

The inclusion of the Zwilich premiere on Previn’s inaugural program is no fluke. “I think we should do at least one 20th-Century work every time we play,” he says. “Of course, it doesn’t always work.

“The problem right now is that I have no empirical knowledge of what goes down well with the orchestra here, and with the public. As for my own limitations, I cannot do certain things, such as Stockhausen. That isn’t my style. But I do feel something recognizably of our time must be played, all the time. I’m not patriotic, not nationalistic. I don’t care about those labels. Still, I think it is important to do lots of American music here, just as it was important to do lots of English music in Britain.

“The music of our time that we play doesn’t have to be tried and true. We must take chances. I like the music of John Harbison, Jacob Druckman, Yehudi Wyner, Barbara Kolb. I have a definite cutoff point, though. I like music that is written out. I don’t like things left to chance. I don’t like performing pieces where the explanations for the symbols in the score take up more space than the music.

“I won’t do music that tells a player to stand on his head and hit the cello with a Coke bottle.

“On the other hand, I won’t do music that strikes me as too easy, too simplistic. I turned down the premiere of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Requiem.

“Pigeonholing me won’t be easy. Of course, there always are exigencies such as recording contracts and long-standing agreements. Philips wants to record the Prokofiev cycle here, so I will have to fit a lot of Prokofiev into the programs. That’s good. That’s natural.

“I would love to conduct ‘Wozzeck’ here, but I see Simon Rattle is scheduled to do that. I don’t begrudge it him, but I certainly do envy him. I’ll also take some comfort in the ‘Wozzeck’ scenes I will do here next season with Hildegard Behrens. She’ll sing Marie in the first half, the final scene of ‘Salome’ in the second. It ought to be sensational.”

And what about Previn’s own music?

“Vladimir Ashkenazy played the premiere of my piano concerto this summer. He loved it. That made me very happy. The press was mixed. Half said it was terrific, the other half didn’t. Half said it was too conservative. That’s odd because I don’t go much beyond Bartok and Britten. Others said it was too radical. Who knows? It is a real, substantial piece. It lasts about 35 minutes. We may record it here.

“Now Yo-Yo Ma wants me to write him a cello concerto. I’d love to do that.”

Previn pleads innocence regarding William Kraft’s departure as Philharmonic composer in residence. “They wanted a new one, that’s all. Kraft’s term was up. It was that simple. I admire Kraft, and I’m looking forward to conducting the premiere of a big new piece of his next year, if it is ready.”

He is guarded when it comes to discussing possible changes within the ensemble.

“I still lack the temerity to say we will do this in Los Angeles and we won’t do that. It is too early. I haven’t even conducted my orchestra yet. I’m not even visible yet.

“Everybody wants to know how I like the orchestra as presently constituted. Obviously there are pluses and minuses. Other conductors have wanted to tell me all about them. I refuse to listen. Everyone has different tastes, different ideas, different concepts.

“I’ll make up my own mind after we start making music.”

Significantly, Previn will not conduct the opening concerts of the season next year, and he won’t lead the inaugural concert at the Orange County Music Center.

“These things are booked way, way ahead,” he explains. “All factors being equal, I’d love to open the season. Ideally, I think the music director should. But Kurt Sanderling was signed long before I was. The orchestra was very lucky to get him. Schedules just can’t be as flexible as we might like.

“I don’t even know about the Orange County opening.”

Reliable rumor has it that Zubin Mehta may return to his alma mater for that glamorous occasion. Los Angeles won’t be seeing much of him, however.

“Zubin now has an exclusive contract for American appearances with the New York Philharmonic,” Previn explains. “I have a similar arrangement now with Los Angeles. It isn’t unusual. Ozawa conducts only in Boston, Muti only in Philadelphia, Dohnanyi only in Cleveland and Solti only in Chicago.

“That certainly limits us when it comes to signing guest conductors. I’d like to get Jeffrey Tate, Kurt Masur, Lorin Maazel. Carlos Kleiber is sensational, but he just won’t leave Munich. I’d be ecstatic if we could get Colin Davis, but he still doesn’t like to travel much. The problems are tremendous.”

Significantly absent from all recent Philharmonic announcements is the name of Previn’s illustrious predecessor, Giulini. The Italian maestro has resumed his professional activities in Europe only, reportedly because he wants to stay relatively close to his home in Milan and to his wife, a stroke victim.

“I certainly hope Giulini comes back,” Previn declares. “It is up to him.”

The subject turns to Michael Tilson Thomas, the former principal guest conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic who seems to have been unceremoniously removed from all local schedules and all plans for the contracted future.

“There is absolutely no reason not to want him back, though there seems to be no need for him during the next season or two.”

Seems?

“I had virtually nothing to do with the planning of the current season. I can take responsibility for some of what will happen in 1986-87. Only the 1987-88 season will really be mine, as will those thereafter.”

Previn’s initial contract spans three years.

Previn’s present celebrity has been enhanced, to a degree, by the recent publication of Helen Drees Ruttencutter’s biography (“Previn”: St. Martin’s Press, $14.95). It begins by updating a set of exhaustive New Yorker essays and ends with a detailed account of the Previn-Pittsburgh rift.

“The Pittsburgh part of the book makes me sad,” the protagonist admits. “It makes it sound as if the Pittsburgh disaster was the Armageddon of my career. It wasn’t, and isn’t.

“There has been too much talk about would I have come to Los Angeles if things had worked out better in Pittsburgh. I am always sorry to hear the speculation. I didn’t get out of Pittsburgh in order to come to L.A. There were problems there and it was time to move on. L.A. had nothing to do with it. I would have been ecstatic to come here no matter what.

“I’m edgy about how the book ends. It leaves me looking suicidal. The song ends with me wading into the sunset at Pittsburgh airport.

“It should have been a happy end. I’m not suicidal. Of course I’ll miss the kids in the orchestra, the young players I brought in. I’ll miss lots of good people. I’m sorry that the new management isn’t continuing my policy to use the best players as soloists. But things end. That part of my life is over.

“Now I’m here. I want to stop talking about what I’m going to do. I want to start doing it. I can’t wait to start.”

Previn answers the door bell. The mail has arrived.

“Is your name Cohen?” asks the friendly postperson.

“No,” he says. “Previn.”

“Previn?” she asks disapprovingly.

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Well,” shrugs the skeptical would-be deliverer. “Nothing for you.”

That, no doubt, will change.