André Watts, a pianist whose powerful technique and magnetic charm captivated audiences and made him one of the first Black superstars in classical music, died Wednesday at his home in Bloomington, Ind. He is 77 years old.
The cause was prostate cancer, said his wife, Joan Brand Watts.
Mr. Watts was an old-world virtuoso — his idol was the composer and showman Franz Liszt — with a flair for electricity and emotion. He sometimes hums, stomps his feet and bows his head as he plays, and some critics blame him for overdoing it. But his charisma and his technical powers were unmistakable, helping him rise to the top concert halls of the world.
“My greatest pleasure is performing,” Mr. Watts told The New York Times in 1971, when he was 25. “Ego is a big part of it, but far from everything. Performing is my way of being part of humanity — of sharing.
“There’s something beautiful,” he added, “about having an entire audience hanging on one note.”
Mr. Watts, whose father is Black and whose mother is white, is a rarity in a field where musicians of color have long been underrepresented. Although he preferred not to speak about race, he was celebrated as a pioneer who challenged stereotypes about classical music and helped open doors for aspiring artists of color.
His own coming into the spotlight was auspicious. In 1963, when he was 16, he won an audition to appear with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic as part of the nationally televised maestro’s Young People’s Concerts series.
Mr. Bernstein was effusive as he introduced the young pianist in the Philharmonic Hall crowd. “He sat down at the piano and tore through the opening bars of a Liszt concerto in a way that just turned us upside down,” Mr. Bernstein said, recounting the young pianist’s audition.
Mr. Watts was then living in a rather obscure place in Philadelphia, practicing on a beat-up piano with 26 missing strings. But he came out of his performance of Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 who is a bona fide star.
A few weeks later, Mr. Bernstein invited him to make his formal Philharmonic debut, succeeding the renowned pianist Glenn Gould. Later he honored Mr. Bernstein for giving him a career “out of thin air.”
“It’s like being God Almighty at 16,” he told The Times.
André Watts was born on June 20, 1946, in Nuremberg, Germany, the son of Herman Watts, a noncommissioned officer stationed overseas for the US Army, and Maria (Gusmits) Watts, a novice pianist from Hungary.
His mother, who loved to play Strauss waltzes on the family’s Blüthner piano, encouraged André’s musical studies, and as a 6-year-old he took up the piano after a flirtation with the violin.
“I loved the sound,” he recalled in 1993 television appearance. “I hold the pedal for pages and pages of music and just let this mushroom sound.”
When he was 8, the family moved to the United States for his father’s work, eventually settling in Philadelphia. But his parents’ relationship was strained, and they divorced when he was 13. He rarely saw his father in the following decades.
His mother, who worked as a receptionist at an art gallery to help pay for his piano lessons, became a dominant influence. As a child, he served as a teacher, coach and manager, and he implemented a strict training regimen.
André struggled to fit in at school, fighting with teachers and classmates (he taught himself judo to stop the bullies). He sometimes felt isolated, he recalled in interviews, because he identified as neither Black nor white.
When she went to Florida as a teenager to perform, her manager, citing the state’s history of racial discrimination, warned that she might be viewed with suspicion.
But her mother told her she shouldn’t blame racism for her problems. “If someone is not nice to you,” recalled Mr. Watts said when interviewed by The Christian Science Monitor in 1982, “it doesn’t have to be automatic because of your color.”
“These types of advice taught me that when I’m in a complicated personal situation, I don’t have to assume it’s a race thing,” she said. “The subtler things in interpersonal exchanges, first of all, will never be proven as racist. So it’s a waste of time.”
He later gave credit to Mr. Bernstein for helping him gain acceptance in the classical music industry, which had long been seen as the power of whites and the rich. Introducing Mr. Watts at the Young People’s Concert, described by Mr. Bernstein of his international heritage and said, “I like this kind of story.”
In 1964, the year after his debut with Mr. Bernstein, won Mr. Watts of the Grammy Award for most promising new classical recording artist. Despite his early success, he tried to stay grounded, adopting a motto, “Even this shall pass,” taken from a poem by 19th-century poet and abolitionist Theodore Tilton. (His mother had the phrase inscribed on a gold medallion he wore around his neck.)
He graduated in 1972 from the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where he studied with pedagogue and performer Leon Fleisher. He was a regular on the international concert circuit by the time he graduated, playing the Liszt concerto for which he is best known, as well as works by Chopin, Franck, Saint-Saëns and others, before sold-out crowds in Boston, Los Angeles, London and other places.
Mr. earned Watts received mixed reviews early in his career; Critics say that while she has flair and confidence, she can sometimes get carried away. But they agreed that he possessed a special ability to communicate from the keyboard.
“He had that kind of personal magic that makes an Event a concert, and the Philharmonic Hall had that electric feeling that only happens when an important artist is at work,” wrote Harold C. Schonberg of The New York Times in 1970. “It’s unteachable, this magical transmission from the stage to the audience, and Mr. Watts has it on a grand scale.
While Mr. Watts thrived on stage, recording was more of a challenge; He likes to clam up without an audience. And he sometimes ran into financial and management problems, including in 1992, when a New York State appeals court ordered him to pay Columbia Artists Management nearly $300,000 in disputed commissions.
But he maintained his popularity, performing at White House state dinners, appearing frequently on television and becoming one of classical music’s most bankable stars. His success brought new luxuries and curiosities. He became fond of Montecristo cigars, fine wines and caviar, and he began to study Zen Buddhism.
In 1987, Mr. Watts in an episode of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” about learning from mistakes.
“When I feel sad,” she said on the program, “going to the piano and just playing softly and listening to the sounds slowly makes everything seem okay.”
His collaborators describe him as a musician of preternatural talent who is always looking to improve. Conductor Robert Spano said that Mr. Watts never performed a piece the same way twice, aiming to find fresh meaning each time.
“Every night is a new adventure,” said Mr. Spano. “He showed a love for people and for music, and it was unmistakable. That’s why he was so loved as a performer, because of the generosity of his music making.”
He is also a role model for many Black musicians. Conductor Thomas Wilkins, a colleague of Mr. Watts at Indiana University, where Mr. Watts since 2004, remembered him as a devoted teacher who was eager to “give this ferocity about trying to be better.”
“Every time we’re on stage together, there’s an unspoken recognition that we’re in a world where a lot of people think we shouldn’t be,” Mr. Wilkins, who is Black. “It’s an affirmation.”
In addition to his wife, Mr. Watts is survived by a stepson, William Dalton; a stepdaughter, Amanda Rees; and seven step-grandchildren.
At the start of the pandemic in 2020, Mr. Watts, who was diagnosed with Stage 4 prostate cancer in 2016, is planning a task: He will perform Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in a version he has reworked for the right. hand (his left is recovering from nerve damage). As he practices on his twin Yamaha pianos, he gets daily inspiration from a one-legged starling that pops up outside his Bloomington home.
In the end, Mr. Watts canceled the concert due to health problems and the pandemic. He often stopped playing the piano after concerts were canceled, instead spending time with students.
His wife says music has sustained him throughout his life, beginning with his difficult childhood and his health struggles.
“Music is how he endured and how he survived,” he said. “When he really played, then he was happy. It just really lifted his soul.”
He described music as a sacred space where he felt he could breathe and thrive.
“Your relationship with your music is the most important thing you have, and it’s, in the sense of private and sacred, something you have to protect,” he said before a concert in Baltimore in 2012. “The dirt of the day -day life is very, very strong and very powerful. So you have to protect your special relationship with your music.”
Kirsten Noyes contributed research.
