Andre Watts delivers solid solo recital

For Andre Watts, the search for the perfect repertory has become a career-long hunt. And it continues.

The popular American pianist, a regular visitor here since 1963 when he was 17, returned Tuesday to give his first solo recital in Walt Disney Concert Hall. Over the year, he has had particular success in the music of Schubert and Liszt yet cannot be considered preeminent in those fields. As always, he plays everything well, usually with panache, polished surfaces and fine detailing. And he did that again Tuesday. But he connects deeply with his material only inconsistently, and seldom to the point of being considered a specialist.

His latest program covered the waterfront, including Scarlatti and Mozart and on to Ligeti, Chopin and Debussy. There were high points, especially in the middle Allegretto of Schubert’s Three Piano Pieces, D. 946, and in Liszt’s “La lugubre gondola,” No. 2, that composer’s tribute to the dying Wagner. Otherwise, Watts’ performances emerged solidly virtuosic but, for the listener, generally unmoving.

He delivered handsome Scarlatti in two sonatas at the beginning of the evening, careful caressing of Mozartean details in the Rondos in D and A minor, great good humor in four excerpts from Gyorgy Ligeti’s “Musica Ricercata.” And three short pieces from Liszt’s last period lent an unexpected gravitas to the second half of the program.