The Indiana University School of Music announced the death of one of its most eminent professors, pianist André Watts, who died of illness on Tuesday at the age of 77.
The son of an African-American sergeant based in Germany and a Hungarian mother, Watts was born in 1946 in Nuremberg. His family moved to the United States when he was 8 years old and settled in Philadelphia.
André Watts made his debut at the age of 16 on January 31, 1963 with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic in the 1er Concerto de Liszt, replacing Glenn Gould at short notice. Four days later, the Columbia microphones archived the unplanned meeting, and the LP was available at record stores two weeks later to surf on an event that even time magazine had related.
Watts had previously won a competition in 1962 that allowed him to appear alongside Bernstein in one of his ” Young People’s Concerts » televised. Despite these omens, the Curtis Institute of Music, where he wanted to complete his training, refused him! He then perfected himself assiduously with the great pedagogue Leon Fleischer, in Baltimore.
André Watts was a pianist close to and known to the North American public, a specialist in romantic repertoires and great concertos from this repertoire (Tchaikovsky, Liszt, Chopin, Brahms, Rachmaninov, Grieg). His 1976 recital, broadcast as part of the program PBS Live from Lincoln Centerwas the first nationally broadcast full-length recital in American television history.
Watts’ meteoric career in the 1960s and 1970s softened somewhat thereafter, but the pianist remained present. We saw it in Montreal from 1965, and the last times in 2002, in the 2e Concerto of Brahms, where he replaced Yefim Bronfman, and in 2004, in an excellent 4e Concerto of Beethoven, instead of Lang Lang. However, health problems led him, over the past 25 years, to concentrate on his teaching activities.
André Watts was the soloist at the very first concert conducted by the young Yannick Nézet-Séguin in Philadelphia. The two artists met there in 2018 in the piano concerto of Grieg. Poetic and generous of sound, Watts testified there to intact means.
Indiana University recalls in its press release the numerous honorary doctorates and distinctions obtained by André Watts, including the National Medal of Arts, received from the hands of President Barack Obama. In 2014 he was inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame.
In 2016, Sony collected all of its Columbia recordings into a 12-CD box set.