PADEREWSKI, IGNACY JAN Paderewski’s father was of noble extraction. His mother died not long after giving birth to him, so that the boy and his elder sister were raised by their father. His first piano lessons were with Piotr Sowinski, but he was apparently mainly self-taught, having a natural talent for the piano and improvisation. At twelve Paderewski joined the Warsaw Conservatory where he studied piano with Julian Janotha and Pavel Schlözer, graduating at eighteen. He made a meagre living by composing and giving piano lessons, and two years after graduation married. His wife died in childbirth, and the son she bore was disabled. In 1882 Paderewski went to Berlin to study composition with Friedrich Kiel for seven months. Here he met Richard Strauss, and having received enthusiastic encouragement from Anton Rubinstein to pursue a career as pianist and composer, returned to Berlin in 1884 to study orchestration with Heinrich Urban.
Throughout the early 1880s Paderewski had practised and worked very hard at the piano and resolved to improve himself by studying various subjects including Latin, mathematics, history and Polish literature. In October 1884 he decided to go to the great piano pedagogue Theodor Leschetizky in Vienna. Even though Paderewski was by now almost twenty-four, Leschetizky took him on as a student, and he also received lessons from Leschetizky’s wife Annette Essipov. After a period teaching at the Strasbourg Conservatory, in 1887 Paderewski returned to Vienna for sixteen more lessons with Leschetizky.
He then went to Paris, making his debut at the Salle Érard, gave a recital of his own works, and performed the Piano Concerto No. 4 in C minor Op. 44 by Saint-Saëns. The Parisians witnessed what every other audience would experience: the extraordinary stage presence and magnetism of Paderewski. After Liszt and Anton Rubinstein, he was to become the most famous pianist in the world, sharing with these two artists alone the ability to cast a certain kind of spell over his listeners. Indeed, Paderewski would even have the lights of the auditorium adjusted as low as possible so as to concentrate the audience’s perceptions. Finding instant success, he had to work even harder to prepare new programmes and learn new repertoire. He played in Vienna and toured through Belgium, Holland, France, Germany, Hungary, Bohemia and Poland before returning to Paris where he prepared for his first appearance in London.
Paderewski was known in England only as the composer of his famous Minuet in G major for piano, and as The Times reported, it was ‘…unlikely that many of those who attended his concert in St James’s Hall… had any idea of what awaited them’. His programme included Chopin’s Étude in G sharp minor Op. 25 No. 6, which ‘…held the hearers spellbound’, and Schumann’s Fantasie in C major Op. 17. A month later he played the Piano Concerto No. 4 in C minor Op. 44 by Saint-Saëns which was delivered with ‘…not merely absolute precision, but much dignity, and showed a high degree of musical intelligence’. At the same concert Paderewski also played his own Piano Concerto in A minor Op. 17. In November of the same year he played Anton Rubinstein’s Piano Trio in B flat Op. 52 with Madame Neruda and Signor Piatti, but was accused of having ‘…not yet acquired the art of making his instrument an integral part of the trio’. His performance of Schumann’s Carnaval Op. 9 at the same concert was more successful, although the early reviews often complain of a forced tone in loud passages. The following day his recital included Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in C minor Op. 111 and Liszt’s Don Juan Fantasy on themes of Mozart. At each appearance Paderewski surpassed his previous performances and he may even have read his criticisms as one reviewer wrote, ‘The almost complete avoidance of his worst fault, the undue forcing of the tone of his instrument, was a remarkable feature of the whole recital.’
Paderewski’s first tour of America, just as Anton Rubinstein’s had been, was managed by the piano-making firm of Steinway. In 1872 Rubinstein had played 215 concerts in 239 days, and Paderewski’s tour was no less gruelling. In his first week he had to play six concertos as well as solos; and, constantly striving for perfection, Paderewski would nearly always be found practising after his concerts. His Carnegie Hall debut was a sensation and from then on, he became the most sought-after pianist in the world. He toured America every year and by the early years of the twentieth century was reputed to be earning a million dollars for each American tour.
His lifestyle had become very grand, his style of living very expensive. He was a generous man, always giving presents to friends and admirers and to many worthy causes, a good number of which were Polish; and he began to take an interest in the politics of his homeland. He also bought a great deal of land in Poland and all of these expenses meant that he had to tour continually to finance them. Paderewski longed for time for leisure pursuits, but was always either practising or touring. He toured North and South America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand and South Africa.
In 1898 Paderewski married for the second time and his new wife cared for his afflicted son Alfred although the young man died at the age of twenty-one not long after his father’s second marriage. They settled at Villa Riond-Bosson at Morges near Lausanne. Paderewski had to take a break from performing in 1907 and 1908 as he was suffering from nervous exhaustion. He had success with his opera Manru in 1902, and during this enforced period of rest worked on his Symphony, but returned to the concert stage in 1909.
When World War I broke out, Paderewski set up relief committees in Vevey, Paris and London and went to America to raise funds for the Polish war effort. His imposing stage presence also made him a great public speaker. After the war he served as the first Premier of Poland and represented Poland at the Paris Peace Conference. However, as his dreams of an independent Poland faded, he resigned from the Conference in 1920; by 1922 he had spent so much of his vast income that he had to return to the concert stage. He decided to tour America again and his private railway carriage complete with piano, cook, secretary, piano tuner and tour manager became a thing of legend. He toured less in the 1930s, and his final tour of America, his twentieth, in 1939 was cut short when he suffered a heart attack. He returned to Switzerland, but at the outbreak of World War II travelled to America to once again help the Polish cause by giving speeches and radio broadcasts. By now Paderewski, at nearly eighty years old, was a frail old man. He died in June 1941, and after lying in state in St Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City was buried in the Arlington National Cemetery. His remains were returned to Poland in 1992 when they were interred at St John’s Cathedral in Warsaw.
Paderewski’s recordings present a problem in that they do not transmit the art that brought him universal fame and acclaim during his lifetime. It is true that his first discs were not made until he was fifty-five years old, yet Moriz Rosenthal did not make discs until he was sixty and many of these are very fine. If Paderewski’s recordings are listened to in the expectation of hearing earth-shattering performances of an immediately revelatory nature, the listener will be disappointed. However, if the recordings are studied with a careful ear, a multitude of subtle characteristics can be heard, and if necessary, explained. The casual listener will hear ‘old-fashioned’ piano-playing, in which Paderewski often does not play with hands together, employs an excessive use of rubato which will be classed as bad taste, and exhibits a weak technique. However, if listened to with an educated ear, many subtleties of tone and pedal effects will be heard, and a style of playing that is often understated and chaste. What the recordings do not convey is Paderewski’s indisputable stage presence, his ability to hold his audience enthralled, even before he began to play.
His first recordings were made for HMV in 1911 at his home in Switzerland. The record company and recording engineers were well aware of Paderewski’s fame, and they took great pains to get the best possible sound: although primitive, it is some of the best recorded piano sound of the time. Sessions followed in Paris and London during 1912 where he continued to record the shorter works of his repertoire by Chopin, Schumann and Liszt. He also recorded some Debussy, six years before the composer’s death, and some of his own compositions. What can be heard in these early recordings is Paderewski’s wonderfully pellucid tone, a suggestion of his hypnotic abilities and the quality of his rubato. In Schumann’s Des Abends from his Fantasiestücke Op. 12 Paderewski’s singing line is evident, and in Warum? his ability to colour different voices can be heard. Another fine disc is of Chopin’s Mazurka in A minor Op. 17 No. 4 where Paderewski gives a wistful and melancholy performance of this exquisitely sad piece. One of the most impressive discs from this period is of Liszt’s arrangement of Chopin’s song The Maiden’s Wish. For its age, the recording captures particularly well Paderewski’s wonderful variety of touches and range of dynamics whilst the recording of Liszt’s La Leggierezza dispels any criticism of his technique.
From 1914 Paderewski recorded for Victor on his visits to America in Camden and New York City, and on his return to America in 1922 he recorded twenty-eight sides over the next two years. From this period the best recordings include his own Nocturne in B flat Op. 16 No. 4, Liszt’s arrangement of the Spinnerlied from Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer and his Hungarian Rhapsody No. 10; Chopin’s Berceuse Op. 57, and Schubert’s Impromptu in B flat D. 935 No. 3. Unfortunately, these recordings were made right at the end of the acoustic era, and in May 1926 Paderewski began to make electrical recordings for Victor. These were the first recordings to truly capture his range of tone. He was already sixty-six and by the time he made his final American recordings in 1930, he was seventy years of age. Highlights from these sessions include four Debussy préludes, Ernest Schelling’s arrangement of Wagner’s Prelude to Tristan und Isolde and Johann Strauss’s waltz Man lebt nur einmal arranged by Carl Tausig.
Paderewski’s final discs were made in London in January 1937 and November 1938 at a time when he appeared as himself in the British feature film Moonlight Sonata. Everything from these sessions was released, and although he was approaching eighty, and his health was frail, the HMV engineers at Abbey Road’s Studio 3 captured Paderewski in excellent sound. His technique was failing by this time, yet some of the works he recorded are given exquisite renditions, particularly Haydn’s Variations in F minor and Mozart’s Rondo in A minor K. 511.
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