A Piano Pro Hits New Stride : After 32 virtuoso years, Andre Watts is taking pains to please himself.

‘I don’t worry anymore,” says Andre Watts, “At least not about the unimportant things.

“I guess that’s a function of getting older,” he continues, chuckling at the thought.

The American pianist is 48, hardly a graybeard, yet he seems relaxed, mellow on the phone during an interview, not quite the aloof and intense artist of other interviews and other meetings during the 32 years he has been playing in Southern California.

At the moment, Watts is in Baltimore, due to play Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto 29 hours hence with the Baltimore Symphony. He is on a cross-country tour that includes Pasadena, where he plays Tuesday night at Ambassador Auditorium.

From a hotel room overlooking the harbor, Watts excuses himself briefly to attend to an important part of the touring pianist’s routine: An upright piano, for practice, has just been delivered to his room and he must supervise its placement.

When Watts returns to the phone, he returns to his thought:

“I’m at a good place right now. I have the luxury of having had a career, so I don’t feel the need to struggle. I don’t brood about the places I haven’t played.”

Instead, he says, his energies are “funneled to the music itself--and that I find more fascinating and compelling than ever. It’s a blessing.

“For instance, I get excited about a new piece on my program,” he says, and about reviving an old favorite like the G-major Sonata by Schubert, as he will next season.

Schubert remains at the center of Watts’ eclectic Classic, Romantic and post-Romantic repertory, music chosen through the years to suit his fiery temperament and virtuoso technique. Watts, who was born in Nuremberg, Germany, is half-Hungarian, and Liszt is another composer with whom he identifies. Not so much for nationalistic reasons, though, “but because of the Gypsy connection,” he says. “I’ve always felt more Gypsy than Hungarian.”

Maybe it was his Gypsy blood that led him, seven years ago, to cause a mini-sensation when he deserted the more or less standard Steinways and Baldwins for the upstart Yamaha piano--a brand switch of memorable proportions in the concert world. Most observers thought the move was inexplicable; some thought that money might have changed hands, a rumored practice.

“Haven’t you heard?” Watts says now. “I gave up the Yamaha. I played my last concert as an exclusive Yamaha artist on Oct. 4.”

With quiet patience--in the piano world, this has been a subject of much speculation--Watts relates the saga:

“In 1987, I was on tour in Japan. Now, I have always played the Yamaha in Japan, and I did so then. And I talked to Yamaha about being exclusive. I decided to do it.

“There were two reasons: first, the uniformity of the instruments”--the grand pianos that Watts then considered comparable to superior pianos of any make--”and the high quality of the service.”

In some venues, he says, he might call Steinway, for example, about a misfiring instrument and get the verbal equivalent of a shrug. With Yamaha, he says, “I could always count on the technicians, wherever I was traveling.”

Last year, Watts decided that “slowly, things had changed, so I parted company with Yamaha.” Once again, it was mostly a matter of support: Yamaha no longer seemed capable of providing to Watts “the really great technicians” when he was on the road.

So today, like a recently divorced person (the pianist laughs at the comparison), Watts finds himself “a free agent.”

“I have no solid firm commitment to any particular piano,” he says. “I am playing what is available. I’m being very selfish in pleasing only myself.”

Is anything else new in a career that stretches back to January, 1963, when a skinny 16-year-old kid from Philadelphia made a surprise debut with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic on its televised Young People’s Concerts and actually became famous overnight?

Not really, Watts answers thoughtfully. This season the nine concertos he is carrying are all familiar--”That’s about what I usually have, every year.” His repertory remains largely mainstream 19th- and 20th-Century music. He has never ventured far into the works of living composers.

“I’ve played any number of world premieres,” he says, “and some hard-nosed, avant-garde music too, though that is not a big draw for me.”

On the other hand, he says quickly, “though I haven’t been looking very hard, there are some pieces I’ve found serendipitously. For instance, the Piano Concerto by Joan Tower. I really like that piece.” Has he played it publicly, or does he plan to? “No, but I really like it.”

What else does he play for fun when he returns to his home of 25 years, an hour north of New York City across the river from Westchester?

“Well, when I get home from tour and don’t want to think about what’s next,” he says, “I play things I would probably never put on programs but enjoy anyhow. Like Bach’s ‘Art of Fugue.’ Or Hindemith’s ‘Ludus Tonalis.’ Or pieces by Scriabin--the sonatas, like the Fourth.”

What Watts does put on his programs are characteristically accessible works, and that sort of agenda will be on view this week at his 18th recital at Ambassador: sonatas by Scarlatti and Beethoven, a ballade and three etudes by Chopin, shorter pieces by Mozart, Berio, Debussy and Liszt.

Does he realize that this will be his final Ambassador appearance--the closing of the hall having been announced for mid-May?

“I just found out a couple of weeks ago,” he says. “Now, it’s sinking in. What an enormous loss! Aside from sending that audience away, what about all those artists--the young ones, particularly--who will now have fewer places to play?”

BRIEFLY: After 25 years on the professional stage, danseur Fernando Bujones will give his farewell performance June 2 at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York with American Ballet Theatre. The vehicle for Bujones’ farewell: “Giselle,” with a longtime partner, Marianna Tcherkassky. . . . The Violin Concerto No. 1 by Virko Baley, music director of the Nevada Symphony in Las Vegas, will receive its world premiere today when the New Juilliard Ensemble, conducted by Joel Sachs, presents the work at Lincoln Center. Soloist is Tom Teh Chiu. . . . Jon Nakamatsu of Los Gatos, Calif., is the winner of first prize and $17,000 in the American National Chopin Piano Competition, held recently in Miami.*