Stage Fright of Paderewski

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19750, 17 March 1934, Page 12

Stage Fright of Paderewski

HELPED TO TRIUMPH BY WIFE

A masterly and intimate biography of the greatest of living pianists is published to-day in Paderewski, by Rom Landau. Some moving pages are concerned with Paderewski's wife, who died early this year. For 30 year’s he never travelled without her. But in 1929, when he was due to start a tour, she was too ill to leave Riond Bosson, Paderewski’s home on the Lake of Geneva: Paderewski was to leave soon after lunch, and they sat down to their last meal together . . . Suddenly she burst into tears and turned to the person nearest to her, exclaiming with sobs: “I should not have let him go alone. I should not have let him go . . . .” An expression of intense anxiety came into Paderewski’s face. He leaned forward and said in a soft voice as though trying to pacify his wife: But Helenka, darling, I am still with you.” Although no greater blow could have been struck at Paderewski, no one was allowed to see how much the gradual loss of his life companion meant to him .... In the afternoons, however, when nobody was about, he would steal quietly into the rooms which were left entirely at Mme. Helenka’s disposal and would tell his most intimate friends afterwards that he had tried to re-establish a contact which higher powers had attacked. Overcoming Nervousness. For years she helped him to overcome the nervousness which afflicted him before each recital: He would reach the artists’ room long before the concert, hoping to conquer his stage fright. This would often take the form of acute pain in the arms, the shoulders, and the back and Paderewski would stretch out his arms and twist his body, hoping that

such exercises might relieve the pain. Small Hands. His wife did not attempt to calm him, but matched his mood with her own: "They would sit together in the artists’ room, and embrace and kiss and embrace again, as though he were condemned to death. When he was just about to leave the room, in a state of complete exaltation, she would seize his hand and put it to her lips without uttering a word.” When he returned from the platform she would be waiting for him. She would take his hands, raise them to her lips, and reverently kiss them.

Paderewski’s hands are small and his fingers short, but they are immensely strong. Before a concert he bathes his fingers in hot water, exercising them in it for a couple of minutes. Often he has had to travel with his own spirit lamp and basin, At times he has practised with such vigour that his finger-tips have bled. The great pianist is a fascinating subject for a biography, and Mr. Landau has written a first-class book.