Odyssey of harmony: Uruguayan pianist Luis Batlle Ibanez has excelled as a performer and teacher, inspiring young artists from the Southern Cone to New England.

• Author: Bach, Caleb

In Uruguay, on the eastern shore of the Rio de la Plata, the name Batlle is synonymous with a political dynasty that has shaped much of that country's history. Catalan in origin, locally it is pronounced "Bah-zhay." The first notable member of the family was Lorenzo Cristobal Batlle y Grau, an army general who served as president from 1868 to 1872, an unruly time when several local caudillos competed for control of the young republic. Later it was his son, Jose Batlle y Ordonez who, as president on three occasions (1899, 1903-7, and 1911-15), shaped much of the modern day republic. Don Pepe, as he was called, led the urban-based Colorado Party while instituting a series of progressive reforms that legalized divorce, abolished the death penalty, offered free public education through college, emancipated women, established an eight-hour workday, and created public health and social security programs. After his death in 1929 his two sons, Cesar and Lorenzo, attempted to extend their father's legacy within a branch of the Colorado Party, while a nephew, Lois Conrado Battle Berres, preached a more conservative brand of batllismo, which garnered him the presidency from 1947 to 1951 (actually he won the vice-presidency but soon succeeded Tomas Berreta, who died shortly after assuming the presidency). In 1952, when Uruguay opted for a collective form of government, he again served as president of the nine-person National Council during 1955-56. Today, one of his sons, Jorge Batlle Ibanez, continues the fancily tradition. He is Uruguay's chief executive. His brother, Luis Batlle Ibanez, however, enjoys all international reputation as a concert pianist and teacher of many other famous keyboard artists. At his home in Vermont, where he leaches at nearby Marlboro College, he generously interrupted a practice Session to discuss his break with a family tradition of politics in favor of a lifelong devotion to music.

"I was a very weak child physically. There had been a lot of tuberculosis on my father's side of the family at a time when few antibiotics were available. My mother always worried something like that would happen to me, so when I started school but got sick, the doctor said I should move to the country, and its pure air. So we did, to a country house about fifteen kilometers from the capital along the road to Colonia del Sacramento. My father commuted into the city, where he directed the family newspaper, Accion. Ancestors on his mother's side were Scots: Berres is a corruption of Berry. My mother was born in Argentina, of Spanish ancestry on her father's side, but Italian on her mother's side, from Uruguay, so she was binational. She didn't know what she was going to do with me--I was five--but because site came from a musical family and knew I liked music and sang well, she decided to borrow a piano from her uncle. In describing the moment, my brother Jorge always says I just sat down and never got up. I guess it is true because I started playing, loved it, and never slopped."

Fortunately, the local musical scene was sophisticated during the thirties and forties largely due to the political convulsions in Europe that obliged mink great musicians to emigrate to the Americas. Legendary performers like Jascha Heifetz, Artur Rubenstein, Arturo Toscanini, and Leopold Stokowski regularly performed in Buenos Aires and Montevideo. The Italian opera companies, too...