Pianist Andre Watts, who has always been a bit partial to Liszt, paid brilliant tribute to the great composer in his New Year Avery Fisher Hall recital February 5. The program was an early tribute to Liszt on the centenary of his death, which will be marked officially on July 31 of this year.
Watts' choice of program was a work of art in itself. He carefully selected pieces that spanned the entire length of Liszt's fifty-odd-year creative career. The first half, for example, included the youthful "Au lac de Wallenstadt," written when the master was only twenty-four. The second half brought such unfamiliar and experimental works as "En Reve," composed when he was already in his seventies, and near death. There were the expected virtuoso display pieces for the general listener, including the brilliant Paganini Etudes; and there were delicate miniatures for the Liszt connoisseur--"Schlaflos, Frage und Antwort" among them. The massive centerpiece of the entire program was the epochal Sonata in B minor.
Watts comes to Liszt naturally--it seems to be in his blood, and might well be inherited from his Hungarian mother. He was born in Nuremberg, Germany, the son of a black American soldier and his pianist-bride. At four, he began music study, and his talent was soon apparent. Beginning with the violin, he switched to piano, and his mother was his first teacher. (She would remain dominant in his musical life for many years, and would storm backstage after concerts with her comments!) When young Andre was eight, his father was transferred to the United States, and he began schooling in Philadelphia. He was no model student in the regular curriculum--he played pinball and hooky too often for that--and bounced from school to school. Several schools asked him to leave, and Watts admits, "They were perfectly justified".
His musical education proceeded much more regularly. At the Philadelphia Music Academy he studied with a pupil of the great Theodor Leschetitzky and made brilliant progress. After being there only a year, he was soloist in a Haydn concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra at the age of nine. When only fourteen--the year his parents separated--he made a tremendous impression in the auditions for the Philadelphia Orchestra's Junior Student Concerts and was chosen to play the Symphonic Variations of Franck with the orchestra.
The following year brought a break that made his career. Watts had auditioned for the Young People's Concerts in New York and created a sensation. Bernstein himself put it dramatically--"I flipped!" he said. The subsequent concert proved a great success. And then, less than three weeks later, Watts got a call in Philadelphia, asking him to substitute for Glenn Gould in a New York Phil-harmonic performance of the Liszt Concerto in E-Flat. It was a knockout concert, and front-page articles in the New York papers carried the news to the world. Overnight, Watts was a global figure.
He continued to study for years, however, performing only rarely. He was, after all, only sixteen. The next stop was the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, where the renowned Leon Fleischer took charge of the young genius. Fleischer was something of a Liszt specialist himself, having made several critically acclaimed recordings of his works before an injury to his right hand made concretizing impossible. Young Andre dutifully took the train each week from Philadelphia to Baltimore, to pursue studies that were increasingly
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