Paderewski’s' Double Life

Dominion, Volume 25, Issue 69, 15 December 1931, Page 27 (Supplement)

Paderewski’s' Double Life

A MUSICAL GENIUS WITH MANY INTERESTS Patriot and Farmer. Ignaz Padcrczuski believes in keeping the two sides of his life strictly apart. He has definite objections to ■mixing music and politics, and docs not want people to bring up the question of Polish affairs when he is playing concerts. Yet how can he prevent it? A pianist zvho has once been Premier of a country can never again be simply a pianist. His musical qualities are linked up by those zvho hear him zvith non-musical matters.

CURIOUSLY, they are linked up with Wilson’s 13th point. That was the point which called for the independence of Poland, and Paderewski, through 'his friendship with Colonel House, is given much of the credit for its formulation. The pianist and the patriot are one man, after all. Clemenceau recognised this when, at Versailles, he hurla. an epigram at Paderewski: “So you were once the world’s greatest pianist, and now you are Pi mier of a country? My God, what a comedown" ' Paderewski’s recent American tour

was bis 17th ; his first was in 1891. The present generation has dim but stirring recollections of the pre-war Paderewski, his flaring hair and low Byronic collars, the avalanche of flowers after each recital, women making fools of themselves wherever he went. There is a headlong quality in him which appears in a motto he wrote in someone’s album, in the days when people had albums: “La patrie avant tout; i’art ensuite.” It is just such intense emotion which is the essence of his music. He is a tumultuous genius, and it has been said that he treats the piano as though it were too small for his conceptions, tries to stretch it to an orchestra. His dramatic flair is shown in the famous incident of his snub to the Czar. Paderewski was summoned to play in the Imperial presence at some

time before the war, when Poland, a resentful undigested lump, had been giving the rulers of Russia severe pains for over a hundred years. The Czar expressed his gratification that so renowned an artist was a Russian subject; Paderewski bowed, looked His Majesty in the eye. “Sire, I am a Pole,” he replied. During an American tour, he travels in a private car. This year for the; first time Mrs. ' Paderewski was prevented by illness from accompanying him. At each town that he visits the car is side-tracked, the telephone is connected—although the master nevei; touches the degraded instrument himself—and there Paderewski is at home, sleeping serenely in the railroad yard amid the nocturnal banging of bells,

scrunching of brakes, and hissing steam which spell torture to far less sensitive travellers. He practises three or four hours a day, but only if the car is standing still as long as that; Occasionally in the evening there is a curious scene when he is playing behind the drawn blinds of his car. Outside, some yard employee stops to listen, then another, until sometimes six or eight men in overalls are standing silently under the. window. Aside from the fact that-he dislikes catching trains there is a reason for the private car, and that is his requirement of a hot and leisurely dinner after a concert, which most hotels cannot supply. He eats nothing before a performance. After his midnight meal he plays a few 7 hands of bridge and then,. at two in the morning, he may decide to go for a walk. He has a grandeur which only great . artists and kings possess in its perfection, but of which there are a great many second-rate imitations. The imitations are known as temperament. For instance, he has a certain way of preparing himself for a concert. Exactly 20 minutes before the performance he retires to his dressing-room to concentrate, tighten himself to a spiritual concert pitch. In time Joubert, his friend and master of arrangements, appears to take him to the stage, but not a word must be spoken, for it would break the tension. One night, however, there was a step down in the dark passage-way, and Joubert cried: “Master, look out!” The master faced about, went back, and shut himself up for another 20 minutes. In spite of such formidable stories he is a lovable person, and courteous in a grave, regal way. He never issues directions; he requests. The coloured Pullman chef who served him on 15 tours he scrupulously addressed as “Mr. Copper.” He .has a simple trust in humanity, and toward indigent Poles in particular he is alarmingly soft-hearted, always bidding his secretary to “give the man fifty dollars.’’ Of the prodigious sums which flowed in to him in every year from 1890 to 1915 there isn’t a trace. A single tour, recoups him to the extent of half a million or so. His minimum fees is 5000 dollars, and he is playing 75 concerts during the present season. At tlie age of three Paderewski saw his village burned, its inhabitants slaughtered, find his father carried off to prison in retaliation for the

latest Polish uprising. During the excitement his mother died. So he learned to hate the Czar before he learned to talk. He was a musical child, but lie was no prodigy. Tie had the genius which takes time and gruelling work to mature. He gave piano lessons in order to study in Berlin, and at 27" made a -brilliant debut in Vienna, Paris. London, and New York followed. Paderewski was a sensation. He worked like nothing human, 14, 17 hours a day. The end of his American tour le+t him sitting on Olympus. In 1899 he married a Polish lady, the Baroness de Rosen, and in the same year bought his chateau at Morges. Switzerland. His interest in farming led him to acquire a 2600-aere ranch in California. He has no house there, but stops at a nearby hotel when he is able, and amazes friends by discoursing on prune, grape, and walnut culture. When the war came he flung himself entirely into the Polish cause. With America as his headquarters, he gave hundreds of concerts for the Polish relief fund, which he headed, made hundreds of speeches, and although hi« English was already practically perfect, he took two lessons a week to polish it. He is a brilliant orator in three languages: English, Polish, and French. At the end of the war his prestige made him the logical man to represent the infant Polish state at the peace conference, and the fact was recognised by Marshal Pilsudski, who has been the real ruler of Poland from the time its independence was restored. Pil* sudski disagreed politically with Paderewski, but persuaded him nevertheless to take the helm of • government. Neither man understood the other, and the pianist was not equipped to hold his own.