WHEN PADEREWSKI PLAYS

Greymouth Evening Star, 17 March 1934, Page 9

WHEN PADEREWSKI PLAYS

HIS UNSEEN TEARS Richard Capell reviewing “Paderewski,” by Rom Landau, published recently, states: — "My success is due 1 per cent, to talent, 9 per cent, to luck, and 90 per cent, to work,” is a saying of Paderewski’s, quoted in. this new biography. As a young man he practised the piano for ten and twelve hours a day, and, when he was preparing a new work, for as much as sixteen.

Unparalleled fame and popularity did not prevent him, even at. the climax of his career, from suffering agonies of stage-fright. The misery began the moment he woke up on the day of a concert. Ho felt his willpower gone. lie could not practise and could-hardly eat. The terror increased as the hour of the. concert came near, and again and again when he was due to go to the platform.he felt positively unable to walk. But the audience never had a suspicion of it all. Madame Paderewski (who died the other day) was his invariable conn panion for 30 years. She would allow no one else to touch her husband’s hair. She brushed it herself, washed it, cut it or. trimmed it, and religiously preserved every scrap that fell.

From the . beginning of his career he has always insisted on playing, in half-darkened halls. The biographer gives the reason for this. It seems that Paderewski- is moved to tears by his own playing, and that he dislikes the idea that the signs of his emotion should be conspicuous.

“WIRELESS KILLING MUSIC” Mr. Landau tells us that —contrary to the legend —it is untrue that the piano-makers ever constructed special instruments for Paderewski, but they did provide his pianos with a specially hard felting on the hammers, to produce the hard tone he preferred. “The wireless is killing music and musicians,” says Paderewski'do Mr. Landau in an interview which forms the last chapter of the book. While a great admirer of his hero, Mr. Landau is not altogether uncritical. Of Paderewski as a teacher he gives an account which suggests an attitude on the great man’s part calculated rather to paralyse than to inspire a pupil. The fact is not disguised that Paderewski frankly regards jhimselg as incomparable amongst, present-day pianists. Mr. Landau is stronger Jn his dealings with Paderewski’s political activities than with 1 his musical activities. The ; book lacks a precise and wellinformed account of his art whether as composer or pianist, but it contains really substantial chapters on Paderewski as Prime Minister of Poland- and Polish delegate at the Paris Conference In 1919. Powerful in personality and charac" ter though Paderewski was, he was no match for Marshal Pilsudski, whom Mr. Landau represents as the cuckoo in that uncomfortable Warsaw nest of 15 years ago—or rather not a cuckoo,’ but a sharp-taloned eaglet in a savage eyrie.