A Giant & a Prince

At first reading, the program change at Manhattan's Philharmonic Hall seemed an unwelcome surprise: the bedazzling Canadian Pianist Glenn Gould had fallen ill and would be replaced as soloist with the New York Philharmonic by somebody named Andre Watts. "Mr. Watts,'' the program note said, "was born June 20, 1946." Could the soloist of the evening really be that young? Then Mr. Watts appeared--sober, skinny, and 16. He got a good-natured round of applause: the Philharmonic regulars seemed to be saying, why pick on a kid? But when Andre left the stage at last, the ringing cheers unmistakably said that no one in the hall had expected to hear a 16-year-old pianist play with such astonishing talent.

Andre played the specialty of his thin portfolio, the Liszt E Flat Piano Concerto. For years young wizards have twisted its lyrical, fragile beauty into a thumping crowd pleaser, but Andre approached the piece as a tone poem. In scherzo passages, he had the speed and power necessary to dignify his delicately poetic ideas of the slow pianissimos. His singing tone stayed with him in every mood of his varied approach, and when he had sounded his final cadenza, the whole orchestra stood with the audience to applaud him. Even the Philharmonic fiddlers put down their bows and gustily clapped their hands.

Full Colors. Son of an American Negro G.I. and his Hungarian war bride, Andre was born in Nuernberg and lived in Europe until he was eight. His mother, a parlor pianist, signed him up for piano lessons when he was six, but Andre wasn't interested. The next year, his mother hopefully gave him a violin for Christmas. His interest in it kindled his interest in the piano, and soon teachers of both violin and piano were crowding the house to tell her that Andre was a prodigy. The family moved to Philadelphia when Andre was eight, and within a year he made his first concert appearance with the Robin Hood Dell orchestra.

"He has always painted in full colors,'' his piano teacher, Madame Genia Robinor, said of Andre after his Philharmonic debut. "His hands are extraordinary. His command of the Romantics is complete. But still, he is a student, and he must go on. So far. he knows almost no Bach."

It was Madame Robinor who arranged his appearance with the Philharmonic by writing to Leonard Bernstein last year and suggesting Andre for a children's concert. When he auditioned, says Bernstein, "I flipped." His children's concert and its television broadcast were such a success that Bernstein brought him back for his big-time debut.

Special Beam. "Normally I would never do such a thing," Bernstein said after the concert. "After all, he's just a boy, just a high school boy. But he's not just another great young pianist. The point is that he's one of those special giants. The seeds of his gianthood are already there. So it seemed a shame not to give him a chance. He just walked right out like a Persian prince and played it. One day he'll undoubtedly be one of a very special dozen of the world's top pianists."

Andre took his triumph easily. He assured all who would listen that he has no intention of beginning a concert career until he finishes high school, and that his experiments with tone row composition would never take his attention from his playing. Beaming endlessly above his clip-on bow tie, he posed for a few hundred pictures, then sat down with his mother to watch all the excitement he had stirred up. "How do you feel, Andre?" said Bernstein. "Could you go out there right now and do it again?'' "Sure," said Andre, and he meant it.

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