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André Watts' Best Liszt · The Piano Maven with Jed Distler

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  This is Jed Disler and welcome to the Piano Maven, your friendly podcast guide to piano
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  recordings. When the 16-year-old Andre Watts made his debut with the New York Philharmonic
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  on television in 1963, he must have inspired tons of young piano students all over America.
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  Of course, he did develop into a very great and mature pianist and artist, as well as
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  a mentor to the numerous pianists who came under his wing. As a teenager, he was quickly
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  signed up by Columbia Masterworks and he recorded for that label from 1963 when he was 16 up
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  until 1980 when he was in his early 30s. By the mid-1980s, he had signed with EMI for
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  whom he recorded not all that much. There was a Beethoven Sonata disc, there was an
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  all Chopin disc, there was a 1988 Carnegie Hall recital celebrating the 25th anniversary
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  of his debut, there were two releases devoted to Liszt, and then for Tell-Arc, he made several
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  concerto discs. Generally, the momentum of his recording career in the 60s and early
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  90s never really picked up again. Like many pianists, Andre Watts tended to let go more
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  in concert than he did in the recording studio and he took more chances in front of an audience.
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  And for this reason, I've always warmed much more to his live recordings than his studio
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  recordings. I'm thinking about his 1980 Tokyo concerts on the Sony classical label and that
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  1988 Carnegie Hall recording I mentioned a few sentences earlier. And I also mentioned
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  the two CDs that Andre Watts recorded in the 80s for EMI devoted to music of Liszt. And
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  these are very, very fine, but I must tell you that the same Liszt selections issued
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  by the Hensler label in live performances from the 1986 Schwarzengen Festival are much
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  better. For example, the Liszt Paganini etudes in these live performances are much more exciting
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  and more scintillating and sharply accented in front of an audience. And there's more
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  spontaneity and inflection throughout the 13th Hungarian Rhapsody and the Vals Oublie,
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  number one. And while Andre Watts' EMI recording of the Liszt Sonata is very distinctive in
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  many respects, I think this live 1986 performance plays up the music's emotional contrasts
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  more fervently and dramatically. There's more abandon in the big octave sections and there's
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  more lightness in the central Fugetta where the notes just sparkle and fly off the page.
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  He's a little more careful in the studio. But also, I think that the sound in this 1986
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  Schwarzengen Festival broadcast tape is warmer, more natural, and easier on the ear, frankly,
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  compared to the sometimes glassy quality of the EMI recordings. So if you want the best
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  performed and best engineered representation of Andre Watts in Franz Liszt's solo piano
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  music, definitely get hold of his 1986 Schwarzengen Festival recital, issued by Hensler Classic.
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  This is Jed Dissler and you've been listening to the Piano Maven Podcast. Happy listening.