Watts, André

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WATTS, André

(b. 20 June 1946 in Nuremberg, Germany), Hungarian/African-American concert pianist who received overnight acclaim in 1963 and crossed the racial barrier by captivating classical music audiences with his virtuosity.

Watts is the only child of Herman Watts, a black American career soldier, and Maria Alexandra Gusmits, a Hungarian and his first piano teacher. He studied violin at four, switching to piano at six. When he was eight, the family moved to the United States and settled in Philadelphia, where he attended the Lincoln Preparatory School and the Philadelphia Academy of Music, studying under Genia Robinor, Doris Bawden, and Clement Petrillo. At age nine he substituted as soloist for his first public performance, playing a concerto by Franz Joseph Haydn with the Philadelphia Orchestra's Children's Concerts. His parents divorced in 1962, and Watts lived with his mother. He graduated from the Philadelphia Academy of Music in 1963.

Watts's big break came on 24 January 1963, at age sixteen, when illness forced the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould to cancel two scheduled performances with the New York Philharmonic under the baton of Leonard Bernstein. Seeking a substitute, Bernstein recalled the young teenager from Young People's Concert, televised on the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) on 15 January 1963. Watts was the first classical musician to make an initial public impact through television and the first black instrumental soloist since the turn of the twentieth century to play with the Philharmonic in a regular concert. Before a concert audience of two thousand, Watts executed a stunning interpretation of Franz Liszt's Concerto no. 1 in E-flat Major. Afterward, fans and critics pressed into his dressing room doorway. When asked whether he would join the classical concert circuit, Watts calmly responded, "That would be foolish. I have so much to learn." Bernstein called him "a natural, a real pro." Watts even made the front page of the New York Times, while Newsweek discussed his "pyrotechnics … and lyricism." The next week, ticket requests for his student recital at the Philadelphia Academy of Music exceeded the number of seats available.

In January 1968 Bernstein welcomed Watts back to the hall to play Johannes Brahms's Piano Concerto in B-flat on the fifth anniversary of his debut. Bernstein commented, "If he goes on this way, he will become one of the world's major pianists." Harold Schonberg, the music critic for the New York Times, wrote that Watts "matured in the right direction," and Harriett Johnson, music critic of the New York Post, said that he was "ageless before he has grown up." Watts's schedule included a fall 1967 European tour with the conductor Zubin Mehta and the Los Angeles Philharmonic and sixty-nine concerts in 1968, each earning $6,000 to $7,000. But Watts agonized over his popularity, trying to limit his expanding concert schedule. Meanwhile, he studied piano with Leon Fleisher and worked part-time toward a bachelor's degree at the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore. (He graduated in 1972). At age twenty-one Watts described the bridge from youth to mature musicianship: "I don't think you're really aware of it until you've crossed over." In 1969 Watts lived in a roomy apartment across the street from Carnegie Hall. He practiced as much as eight hours daily, mastering the music of Beethoven, Schubert, Liszt, and Chopin, stomping his feet when not pedaling, and adding vocalization to completed rhythm. To "add vocalization" means that like all masterful pianists, he initiates rhythm, adds content, and then concludes with interpretation of the music he is adding to his repertoire. After practice he relaxed his 145-pound body with yoga and a good cigar.

In May 1969 Watts performed Liszt's Piano Concerto no. 1 under the Boston Symphony conductor Erich Leinsdorf for the Inaugural Concert in Constitution Hall. An elderly lady, who turned out to be Jane Beeson of Lindsay, California, leaned over to her nephew and former music student and said, "If you only had practiced more, you could have been up there on that stage yourself, instead of sitting just here." Her nephew was Richard Milhous Nixon, president of the United States.

A black critic for the Saturday Review critiqued Watts's interpretation of Beethoven's Sonata no. 24 in F Sharp Major, op. 78. "I thought the greatest pleasure of the evening would be the novel sight of hearing a brother playing the piano … but before he got two feet into his program, … who he was or what he looked like had no part in his accomplishment. He became a pianist without race." Watts himself rejected the idea of a black aesthetic or a black ideology. "I share both the black and the white worlds.… I think I'm qualified to criticize both sides." Black militants resented Watts for "making it on their money but keeping too quiet on the Cause scene, that he must have a hole in his soul," and some musical critics accused Watts of careless musicianship. Despite negative commentary, Watts was a symbol for the civil rights movement, a quiet fighter "who lets his good example as a famous artist have the effect of a thousand protesters," according to Norman Darden, writing in the Saturday Review (26 July 1969). By 1969 Watts had played with nearly every major orchestra in the United States, Asia, and Europe, with a growing list of recordings to his credit.

As the decade of the 1960s closed, Watts was compared to Van Cliburn, Artur Rubinstein, and Vladimir Horowitz. Watts believed "in fidelity of the mind" and chose to live a solitary life, admitting, "I suppose when I'm old I'll be very lonely." Around his neck hung a gold medallion, a gift from his mother. On it, his motto was inscribed: "Even this shall pass away."

Notable Black American Men (1999) covers Watts's development as a concert pianist. Linda J. Noyle, ed., Pianists on Playing: Interviews with Twelve Concert Pianists (1987), contains a personal interview with Watts about his technique and practice habits. Numerous periodicals discuss his life, including "A Real Pro," Newsweek (11 Feb. 1963); "Prodigies," Esquire (May 1964); "Beautiful Innocence," Newsweek (29 Jan. 1968); "André Watts: A Giant Among Giants at Age 22," Ebony (May 1969); "My Man André," Saturday Review (26 Jul. 1969); "I'm Doing All Right, I'm Never Good Enough, But I'm Not Standing Still," New York Times Magazine (19 Sept. 1971); "André Watts," American Music Teacher (Apr. 1972); "Ten Outstanding Single Men: André Watts," Ebony (Aug. 1972); "Watts Plays for the Millions," New York Times (26 Nov. 1976); and "Concert: André Watts Plays Mozart," New York Times (13 Aug. 1987).