Biography

André Watts successfully built on an initial burst of publicity as one of the first African Americans to achieve international fame in classical music. In later life, he has been a noted educator. Watts was born in Nuremberg, Germany, on June 20, 1946. His father, Herman Watts, was a U.S. Army officer in occupied Germany, and his mother, Maria Alexandra Gusmits, was a Hungarian pianist. Watts started violin lessons at four but switched to his mother's instrument two years later, taking his first lessons from her. The family settled in Philadelphia, where Watts enrolled at the Philadelphia Musical Academy (now part of the University of the Arts). He made his debut at nine, playing a Haydn piano concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra in a children's concert. By 14, he was included on the orchestra's regular schedule, playing Franck's Symphonic Variations. A breakthrough came two years later when conductor Leonard Bernstein invited him to perform on one of the New York Philharmonic's nationally televised Young People's Concerts. Watts gave an assured performance of the Liszt Piano Concerto No. 1 in E flat major, impressing Bernstein and many others. Two weeks later, Bernstein asked him to substitute for an ailing Glenn Gould in a Philharmonic concert; Watts again played the Liszt Piano Concerto No. 1, to critical acclaim. These successes landed Watts a slot as a student of Leon Fleisher, one of the most prominent pianists of the time. He attended the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, combining his studies there with a packed concert schedule that included as many as 150 concerts a year. Watts made an international impact with concerts in London, at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw in the Netherlands, and at several German venues, including Nuremberg. His Carnegie Hall debut in New York came when he was just 20, and on his 21st birthday, he performed the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2 in B flat, Op. 83, with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. In 1969, he performed at the inauguration of U.S. President Richard Nixon. Watts continued to appear frequently at major New York venues, and in 1976, a Watts recital was televised on the Public Broadcasting System's "Live from Lincoln Center" program, making him the first pianist to have a full-length recital broadcast on television in the U.S. Watts' charisma made him a favorite among concert audiences in the U.S. and internationally, and in 2000, he returned to the Philadelphia Orchestra for a concert celebrating the orchestra's 100th anniversary. Despite health problems, he continued performing into senior citizenhood, recovering from several hand surgeries. The last one, in 2019, left Watts with nerve damage in his left hand, but he bounced back once again, planning performances of a right-handed version of Ravel's Concerto for the Left Hand in 2020. Watts recorded for the Columbia Masterworks label, signing a contract in 1967 and releasing the album The Exciting Debut of André Watts. He later recorded for Angel/EMI and Telarc, and he lived to see many of the recordings from his prime years reissued on EMI and by Columbia's successor, Sony Classical. In 2000, Watts became artist-in-residence at the University of Maryland, and in 2004, he joined the music faculty at the University of Indiana. Watts is the recipient of several major honors, including the Avery Fisher Prize in 1988. In 2020, he was inducted into the American Philosophical Society.