André Watts, piano

Saturday, December 3, 2011 | 8:00 pm

Page Auditorium

André Watts was born just after the second world war to an American father and a Hungarian mother, the latter of whom famously used stories of Liszt’s work ethic to inspire Watts to practice as a child. It paid off handsomely when he filled in for Glenn Gould with the New York Philharmonic in 1963, where his preternatural command of Liszt’s first concerto brought down the house and launched a distinguished career. In Durham, the Avery Fisher Prize recipient trains his finely honed expertise on an all-Liszt program in honor of the master’s bicentennial, including the Sonata in B Minor — that deathless ode to Schumann — and the sublimely darkening later work Nuages Gris.

Program