By Janelle Gelfand
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Andre Watts

Five decades into his career, celebrated pianist Andre Watts is playing the same way now as he did when he was 10 years old.

"The core is the same, but I would hope that my playing's a little more direct. You try to strip away the unnecessary, the decorative," says the 57-year-old pianist by phone from Portland, Ore., where he was playing Rachmaninoff's Second with the Oregon Symphony last week.

"Then, of course, you actually feel differently. An outcry with the fist shaken at the heavens is different at 17 than at 57, and it should be."

Watts performs Beethoven's massive Concerto No. 5, Emperor, with Paavo Jarvi and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in three concerts next weekend.

"I hope I see you without the fire alarm this time," jokes Watts with a deep-voiced laugh, as he recalls his last trip to Cincinnati in 1995. His recital christening the Jarson-Kaplan Theatre at the Aronoff Center was interrupted by a fire alarm, and he and the audience ended up temporarily on the sidewalk outside.

Two years ago, Watts had a more frightening interruption, when he suddenly collapsed while waiting backstage to perform with the Pacific Symphony in Orange County, Calif.

IF YOU GO

What: The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Paavo Jarvi, conductor; Andre Watts, piano When: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday; 3 p.m. next Sunday Where: Music Hall The program: Jonathan Holland's Halcyon Sun (world premiere); Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat Major, Emperor; Schumann's Symphony No. 2 in C Major Tickets: $13.75-$56.75; $10 students; Sunday's concert is $5 for ages 6-18. 381-3300 or www.cincinnatisymphony.org

"It was a spontaneous hematoma. Sometimes it's a vein; mine was an artery, so it was like an oil well," he recalls. "We had played the night before, and I was feeling perfectly normal. I passed out, and they tried to keep me conscious. ... I remember very little, but there was a nurse - who was not a young woman - and she wanted to keep me going. She said, 'By the way, this is not my job; I'm actually a Victoria's Secret model,' " he laughs.

'Was very fortunate'

"It was frightening, but probably more frightening for my wife (Joan Brand, whom he married in 1995)," he says. "I was very fortunate, because a really great brain specialist at Hoag Hospital was called. Otherwise, I don't believe we would be talking here."

Following surgery and nine days in Hoag Memorial Hospital in Newport Beach, Watts was, amazingly, back on the concert stage two months later. He says he has suffered no residual effects.

Watts electrified America as a 16-year-old in 1963, when he made his debut with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic in a Young People's Concert. Two weeks later, he stepped in for an ill Glenn Gould to play Liszt with the Philharmonic.

Since then, he has become famed as a master of the grand romantic tradition of piano playing, of Liszt's knuckle-breaking concertos and Rachmaninoff's sweeping themes. But it is Beethoven's music, says Watts, that has been his mainstay from the beginning.

"From the time I was 16 until I was 23, the concerto I played most was Beethoven's Fourth," Watts says. "The Fifth is a great work. There are a billion things you could say about the piece."

Watts, who often performs master classes and is artist-in-residence at the University of Maryland, begins a play-by-play of Beethoven's Emperor Concerto No. 5.

"One of the fascinating things, perhaps more than any of the piano concertos, is that it most strongly illustrates Beethoven's ability to create a whole piece out of a motive that's not even a melody - a short little thing," he says, his enthusiasm growing as he talks about the music.

The pianist has always been struck by the sonorous quality of Beethoven's music - something that goes back to his childhood. Watts was born in Nuremberg, Germany, to an American Army officer and his Hungarian-born bride. His mother was his first piano teacher.

"My earliest musical memory was the piano," he says. "What I liked to do was to stand with my right foot on the pedal, and play things and listen to how long they would last, and add another one in. It was just sonority. That, I must say, I recognize it to this day."

He learned to listen to that sonority when, at 19, he went to the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore to study with pianist Leon Fleisher.

"I remember him telling me, 'Spend a half an hour playing just one note. See how loud can you make it; how soft can you make it? How fat can you make it sound, how thin?' ... That was a new concept. I thought, my God, I'm going to spend a half an hour on that, and my practice sessions will be longer," he laughs.

Watts' practice sessions haven't gotten any shorter. At the moment, he is learning piano pieces by Hungarian composer Gyorgy Ligeti, as well as two Chopin Ballades, Nos. 3 and 4 - which he has never performed. He's also practicing Francis Poulenc's Concerto for Two Pianos to play this summer, and learning a recital of two-piano music that he'll perform with a friend, German pianist Georg Schenck, at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art next fall.

No plans to retire

At 57, he remains one of the musical giants of our century. How long will he keep touring?

"As long as the positives outweigh the negatives, which is going to be dangerous if I live that long," he says, with a genial laugh. "Players get old and their bodies fail, but they recognize that they can penetrate into pieces better than most people. ... But it becomes very sad when people stay too long. That would be one of the things to pray for - that you will know when to stop."

E-mail jgelfand@enquirer.com