PADEREWSKI

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 7 May 1927, Page 11

PADEREWSKI

N- 0 distinguished figure among contemporary pianists has so captured the popular imagination as Paderewski, says a writer in the “Sydney Morning Herald.” He is not only a great musician, he is also a great patriot. In a life opulent in high achievement, he has acquired eminence in'two singularly unrelated spheres, art and politics. In the World War he readily sacrificed his brilliant concert successes in order to help his stricken fellow-countrymen, the Poles, and lead the struggle for the emancipation of his country. Even music, in which he had already won peerless renown, was abandoned that he might devote himself to the call of patriotic duty. For five years, accordingly, he hardly touched the piano, inasmuch as he was too strenuously engaged in the campaign for the relief of the Polish war sufferers, and the organisation of the Polish Republic, of which he became Premier in 1919. Those were stirring days in national history, when the beflagged streets of Posen were lined with troops and thousands of citizens cheering the new Premier as he passed through the city on his way. to Warsaw. If the world was surprised that a man who till that time had spent his life in the study of the great master in music should have revealed a capacity for the complex task of government, and should so promptly have demonstrated this capacity in his programme of social, industrial, and franchise reform for the Republic, this surprise. must be attributed to the fact that the world did not know M. Pade rewski. He has been one of the first to present the proposition that art workers are idealists, confined to a narrow road very much apart from the broad pathway of life itself. “The art worker,” he says, “never approaches a place among the great until he has brought himself into communication ; with life in all its wonderful manifestations.” In other words, the artist must be a man of broad vision, able to survey all human activities, and take a keen interest in all subjects engaging the attention of his fellowmen. His art will be all the better for this universality of vision. And because M. Paderewski himself has maintained this broad outlook upon affairs, it was natural to him that, stepping from one great sphere of art into another totally different, he should throw all his energies into the multiform tasks which fell to his lot when he took to the platform on behalf of Poland, organised in the United States an ai*my of volunteers to .be known as the Polish Army in France, undertook the duties of representative of the Polish people at Washington, and finally became Premier of his country and a member of the Peace Conference in Paris.

MUSICIAN AND STATESMAN

HIS DISTINGUISHED CAREER

He forsook active participation in politics with his resignation of the Premiership at the end of 1919. It was then feared that Paderewski's public career in music had ended. But in 1922 came the announcement that he had decided to return to the concert platform. The news caused an extraordinary outburst of enthusiasm. He reappeared first in New York, and those who were present at any of his recitals in that city, before he set out upon his tour of the United States, will not readily forget the scenes of popular fervour which accompanied these appearances. When the renowned, pianist, older, but als stately as of yore, walked on from the wings at Carnegie Hall, the great audience rose to its feet in greeting. And then, as he played Beethoven’s “Sonata Appassionata,” or Sehuman’s Fantasia, Op. 17, or groups of Chopm and Liszt, one realised that he was the same incomparable artist as ever, with that poetry that enchanting revelation of the meaning oi the composer, which have made Paderewski pre-eminent.

It was impossible for weeks before to buy tickets, for any of these recitals, and these clamorous scenes were repeated all the waj T on his tour through the States. The gross receipts for only 17 appearances exceeded those for 67 in his 1892 tour, which, till that time, had been regarded as wonderful. The pianist had originally planned only 50 recitals on this new campaign, but when he' learned of the clamorous demands pouring in upon his New York manager, Mr. George Engles, from all parts of America, he extended his route to include another ten recitals, and later was obliged to add a further ten, making the total number 70. Even then, it was impossible to meet half the demands. Public interest was keyed to the highest pitch everywhere. In eight out of ten cities along the route, the houses were sold out within from 12 to 24 hours after the sales /opened}. In Toronto, where the only Canadian recital was given,, the whole house was disposed of before the morning of the sale.*“l simply must hear Paderewski,” wrote a piano student in Ohio to the manager. “It means so much to us that he is coming back to the platform. If he were to give up now, why should we struggle so hard to achieve something?” “This,” said Mr. Engles, “is typical of the letters we have been receiving from all over the country.” In Paris and London, when Paderewski gave recitals in June, 1923, there was the same enthusiastic welcome.

No pianist, it. may be repeated, has more vividly touched the popular imagination—not so much by great technique as by the magnetism and charm of his readings of all the famous classics.