Hello I'm Krestey Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 1996 and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is a composer and conductor.

My castaway this week is a composer and conductor.

After his parents fled from Nazi Germany he grew up in California

where his skill as a jazz musician won him a job at MGM and led to four Oscars

for his film scores. In the 60s he turned his back on Hollywood and as principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra

set out to establish himself as a serious musician despite succumbing to the occasional

appearance on the Morecombecombe and Wies show.

For nearly 20 years now, he's worked with many of the world's most famous

orchestras, particularly the Vienna Philharmonic,

gradually losing his celebrity status in the process.

He's had four wives, including Dory Previn and Mia Faro, but remains grateful for his change of

circumstances.

It really is nice, he says, to be just considered a musician these days.

He is Andre Praveen.

Is that to suggest Andre that you didn't enjoy your celebrity status?

Oh, I enjoyed it a great deal, but I'm not sure that I like the emphasis on the

word just in as in just a musician. Well I'm quoting you. Yes I know you are I

know that's the deadliest thing to do of all. But I'm pleased to be involved in music that is music for its own sake and not for the peripheral glamour of who's doing it.

But you always seem to enjoy that glamour of who's doing it. But you always seem to enjoy that glamour when it was around. You

seem to be such an extrovert. One thinks of you in the late 60s, early 70s with your

...