For a moment the young man was too stunned to mumble a polite reply. It was true that this opinion was only one against many others in the opposite direction. But it was Anton Rubinstein’s opinion, and that gave it a few extra votes. In any case it was all that was needed to decide the young man’s future. Somehow he would manage the impossible task of raising the money to study the piano seriously. It was his last chance, if indeed it was not already too late, so he could not afford to settle for anything but the best. He would go to Vienna and study with Leschetizky.
Before he could even think about the future, though, he knew that he needed a rest. The years of intensive work, compounded by a constant uneasiness about his little boy’s delicate health, had exhausted him. He decided to spend a few weeks in the beautiful Tatra Mountains. There he could think things out—and start adding up figures. What would a few months in Vienna cost? How much did Leschetizky usually charge per lesson? What was the quickest way to raise the money? The last question was a tricky one, since there was no quick way to raise money. It would have to be done piecemeal.
In the village of Zakopane where he stayed, there lived an old doctor who was an expert on the folk music of the region. Paderewski tramped happily through the hills with his new friend, jotting down notes as fast as the good old man could whistle them. One day the doctor said, “Guess who arrived in the village to open up her summer home? Helen Modjeska! Would you like to meet her?”
Paderewski gasped. “Modjeska? Here? Certainly I’d like to meet her!” Who wouldn’t? How many times he had cheered himself hoarse over a Modjeska performance in Hamlet or Othello! Poles all over the world loved Modjeska, not only because she was a great actress, but also because she was dedicated heart and soul to the cause of a free Poland. Since she was one of the most famous actresses in the world, she had done as much as anyone alive to remind the world that there was such a place as Poland.
Modjeska and her husband were delighted with the handsome young musician, and when he played the piano for her the actress was enchanted. “You will have a great career!” she predicted. “You will do great honor to your country. But you must start at once!”
Paderewski smiled. Non-musicians simply did not understand these things! “You are kind, Madame! But I am not ready to start. Not until I have studied much more. And that is not easy to do.”
“Studying costs money.” She frowned. “I understand that.”
He nodded. “I’ll raise it somehow. Maybe if I give a few hundred concerts! Next month I’m giving a little recital in Cracow. It might even fill about one quarter of a hall—if the hall is small enough.”
The actress’s beautiful dark eyes flashed. “Nonsense! The hall will be filled! Sold out! There will not be an empty seat!”
“Thank you, Madame.” Paderewski laughed delightedly. “You are very flattering, but I’m afraid the people of Cracow won’t quite turn out en masse to hear me.”
“Perhaps not. Not yet—but they might just turn out to hear me. We shall make it a double bill. Paderewski plays, Modjeska recites! What do you say?”
For a moment he was too stunned to say anything at all.
The hall was indeed sold out and the box-office “take” was at least five times greater than the poor pianist had expected. Modjeska’s name on the program was the greatest endorsement he could have had in Cracow. People flocked to hear her recite from the beloved Polish poets. They stayed to hear the unknown pianist play his persuasive brand of Chopin. In one evening he had earned enough to live in Vienna for at least three months. The “right person at the right moment” pattern was once more in evidence.
In 1886 Vienna was the heart of the musical world. The great composer, Johannes Brahms, lived and worked there. The Vienna Philharmonic was the oldest and finest symphony orchestra in the world. The Vienna State Opera was producing its almost flawless productions under some of the world’s finest conductors. Johann Strauss was writing operettas such as Die Fledermaus and “The Gypsy Baron,” while the whole country waltzed to the “Beautiful Blue Danube” and “Tales From the Vienna Woods.” To the hopeful young Polish pianist, however, the center of Vienna’s musical life was the studio of Theodore Leschetizky.
From the phenomenally early age of fifteen, Leschetizky had been recognized as a remarkable teacher, and while he himself played publicly until he was past fifty, his greatest gift was the ability to make superb pianists out of the advanced students who came to him from all over the world.
“Play something for me.”
When Paderewski called on Leschetizky, the great man received him cordially. “Of course! You are the young man whose music my wife so admires! Many young composers are kind enough to bring me their new compositions. You have some pieces to play for me?”
Paderewski gulped. Now that he had to put it into words, his mission suddenly looked a bit ridiculous. As clearly as he could, he explained to Leschetizky that he had not come to him as a composer but as a piano student, since he wanted to have a career as a concert pianist.
The older man’s bushy eyebrows flew up. “Are you serious? But—how old are you, young man?”
“Twenty-four.”
“And at twenty-four you intend to start studying to be a virtuoso? Do you realize what you are saying?”
Although a man is still very young at twenty-four, he is far too old to begin a new career as a pianist. Either he should be well on his way to an established reputation by that age, or he should forget the whole thing. Paderewski knew this as well as anyone.
Leschetizky was now pacing up and down the room nervously. “It is impossible, I tell you! Impossible!”
Paderewski felt as though the world were crumbling into bits and pieces. Seeing the look on his face, the good-natured professor said more kindly, “Well, well—since you are here, play something for me. It does not matter what.”
With what desperation Paderewski must have poured into his playing the emotions that were surging through his head at that moment! He played his own compositions, since he knew little else. When he had finished, Leschetizky, who had stopped pacing, said quietly, “You have a great many qualities as a pianist. You have a natural technique, but it lacks so much. Still, you have the principal quality—that is tone.” He frowned and shook his head sadly, “But I am afraid there will be too much to do with your fingers. They absolutely lack discipline. Besides,” he added, cutting directly to the heart of the problem, “I am afraid you do not know how to work!” This was the thing that Paderewski had known all along. It was, in fact, the reason he had decided he must study with Leschetizky. “If I decide to give you lessons,” Leschetizky was saying, “you must start with finger exercises and with Czerny studies.” This was where all well-trained beginners started. But it was also the way that every Leschetizky pupil, no matter how advanced, had to begin working towards his lofty goals: absolute mastery of each finger, and a beautiful, singing tone.
Now Paderewski knew how someone feels who must begin learning to walk all over again after a leg injury. As he thumped out his scales and exercises, he realized more clearly than ever how slipshod his playing really was. “I could not improve in a few weeks or months even, because bad habits were already deeply rooted in me, an amateurish way of treating the piano, just play the piano, fingering—anyhow!” No wonder poor Leschetizky almost gave up hope during the early days. “No, no, it’s impossible!” he would say, tugging nervously at his beard. “It’s too late! It’s too late! You have wasted your time on pleasant things like orchestration!” And here he would add the most heart-breaking judgment of all: “Ah, but if you had begun to study earlier. Then you could have become a great pianist!”
But Leschetizky had not reckoned with Paderewski’s stubborn determination to work. He practiced seven or eight exhausting hours a day. By the end of each session he felt as though his arms would drop off at the shoulder. There was no time in his life now for anything but work. He who had such a gift for friendship now found that his closest friend was a little spider who ran down a thread and sat on the music rack while he practiced.
In spite of his Spartan existence, Paderewski was completely happy. He knew that he had, at last, found exactly the man he needed. “He opened up another world to me,” he wrote later. “After those groping, struggling years, even in a few lessons things became clear. I began to see, to understand, to know how to work. And my thankfulness to Leschetizky is as great today as it was then!”
But life in Vienna was expensive, and although the generous Leschetizky refused to take any money at all for these priceless lessons, Paderewski’s small supply of cash finally ran out. Through Leschetizky’s influence he was offered a decently paid post at the Strasbourg Conservatory. During that year, he played five important public concerts. The more he played, the more he could see not only how far he had come but how far he still had to go. When the school term was over, he left Strasbourg, determined to get back to Vienna and Leschetizky at all costs. But how?
Once more it was Edward Kerntopf who came to his rescue. He insisted on giving his friend the necessary money. Much as Paderewski hated to impose his problems on anyone else, he felt a strong conviction that some day, in some small way, he would be able to repay Edward’s kindness.
And so back to Vienna and Leschetizky, and those driving hours of work. But this time it was different. This time both student and teacher knew that the impossible was actually going to happen.
Before Paderewski had been in Vienna many months, Leschetizky came to his room one day and said, “I have a suggestion to make to you. Would you not like to make your first appearance here in Vienna? Pauline Lucca—she is such a beautiful singer!—is doing a charity concert. She wants to have a pianist on the program too. It’s a good opportunity. I think you should take it.”
“Yes, I shall be glad to,” Paderewski said, his eyes shining. What delighted him to the point of dancing was not the idea of the concert itself. That was just a matter of playing a few pieces during the program so that the singer could rest her voice. What filled his soul with joy was the fact that Leschetizky himself believed he was ready for his debut in Vienna!
Nearly all the musicians in Paris came to the piano recital given at the Salle Erard on the evening of March 3, 1889. The French composers Gounod, Massenet, and Saint-Saens were there. So was their famous Russian colleague, Tchaikovsky. It was the sort of audience that is usually described as “small but distinguished.” It included many members of the Polish aristocracy in exile who lived in Paris, their “second capital.” And they had brought with them whatever friends among the French nobility they could round up for the occasion. It made no difference to them that they had never even heard the name of the young man who was playing. The fact that this Ignace Jan Paderewski was a Polish artist was all they needed to know about him.
From Paderewski’s point of view, however, the two most important people in the audience were two Frenchmen named Edouard Colonne and Charles Lamoureux. Both men were conductors of highly successful orchestras bearing their names. And each man was not only constantly on the alert for new talent, but was eager to be first in bringing it before the public.
Paderewski sat in his dressing room before the concert, completely alone, as was his habit. He was not thinking about the audience or anything else in the world except the music he would soon be playing: Beethoven’s Thirty-Two Variations in C minor; some Chopin (whose music he loved above any other and which he felt that he, a Pole, could play as Paris had not heard it before), and one of the most brilliant and fiery of the Hungarian Rhapsodies by Liszt.
The manager of the hall had been surprised when the young visitor had asked to have the lights lowered to about half their usual brightness. So was the audience, accustomed as it was to recitals played with the gaslight blazing at full power. But early in his concert career Paderewski had found that a bright light on the keys of the piano made it almost impossible for him to play.
What happened that night in the Salle Erard?
We have a report about it from a man who was himself one of the world’s greatest pianists, and no tribute can be held in higher regard than that spoken by one artist about another. Alfred Cortot said of Paderewski’s Paris debut, “He appeared with the suddenness of a lightning stroke, making a blurring, an eruption in our hearts. Instead of a pianist, an inspired poet took possession of the keyboard.”
The listeners, charmed from the first moment by the romantic appearance of the newcomer, grew more and more enthusiastic with each succeeding piece. But after the last encore—the encores lasted for nearly an hour—the audience was on its feet thundering its approval.
Two men in the audience had better things to do than shout and applaud. The minute the last note had died away, conductors Colonne and Lamoureux leaped to their feet and began a race to the platform. Each man was determined to get there first. Lamoureux, by a masterpiece of broken field running around cheering Polish counts, French dukes, and assorted musicians, won the race. “Monsieur,” he puffed, hearing Colonne slide to a stop behind him, “I have the honor to invite you to appear as soloist in three weeks with the Lamoureux Orchestra!”
Lamoureux and other new friends pressed the young pianist to arrange several additional solo recitals at once. “You must strike again while this enthusiasm lasts,” they told him. “You must reinforce this first success, or people will quickly forget you.” All professional artists are aware of the fickleness of the public. Paderewski knew what good advice his friends were giving him. The night’s triumph, therefore, instead of making him happy, plunged him into absolute misery.
Why? Because the modest young man, encouraged to try his luck by his success in Vienna, had come to Paris with exactly one program prepared. And he had just finished playing it! He could have postponed his Paris debut until he had a larger repertoire, but it had never once occurred to him that he would be called upon to play anything in Paris but his one recital. And now!
“It’s impossible,” he told himself on that triumphant evening of March 3. The first program—the only program—had taken him eight months to prepare to his satisfaction. Now he was asked to prepare a second program in three weeks! “It’s absolutely impossible! I can’t even think about it!”
On the morning of March 4, he said, “Well—maybe I could try—”
On the evening of March 23 he appeared with the Lamoureux Orchestra in the Saint-Saens Piano Concerto in C minor. He played it, said the city’s toughest music critic, “in a superb and masterful manner.” Critics should be embarrassed, the writer added, to praise Paderewski, because they had been so free and easy in using superlatives to describe other pianists. As a result, there was now a shortage of new words by which to describe the particular genius of the Polish artist. Another newspaper promptly labelled him “the Lion of Paris.”
The faster Paderewski’s career gathered speed, the harder he worked, “always struggling for perfection, pushing on and on to that ever-receding faraway peak of attainment,” he would write of those days. “All work is like that.... The summit of the mountain is always farther and farther away.” He went back to Vienna and prepared more and more programs, and added concerto after concerto to his growing list. He accepted more and better engagements with bigger and bigger box office receipts to show for them. He toured the French provinces—Lyons ... Nantes ... Bordeaux ... Tours.... Then on to Antwerp ... Brussels ... Liège ... and Vienna again. And always Paris. After three successful seasons in Paris he felt like a real veteran of the concert stage.
The financial rewards of success were important to him because of Alfred, who was now nine years old. It had been evident from the time he was a year old that the little boy, mentally so alert, was not developing well physically. In those days doctors could do very little to improve or even to diagnose his condition. It would seem that he suffered from a congenital weakness of the spine, and possibly of the heart. “Always in the foreground,” his father wrote, “was the menace of his illness, a constantly increasing problem to be met. He had his tutors at this time and he was intelligent and gifted. He had a brilliant, clear mind; he loved music too. It was difficult to take him to concerts, but he often went to recitals at the Salle Erard which we could manage easily and he was very happy to go, and touchingly proud of me at these concerts. It was a great excitement to him, a stimulant to his mind. Poor child, he was completely cut off from everything in life except intellectual things, by his great infirmity.”
Father and son were together at last. And Paderewski had accepted the fact that the boy would never walk. In Paris Alfred was cared for in the home of the beautiful Mme. Helena Gorska, a friend who gave great love and kindness to the motherless boy and therefore much peace of mind to his father.
Paderewski’s reputation made possible another long-awaited opportunity. In 1889, a great exhibition—a sort of World’s Fair—was held in Paris. It included a display of pianos from all over the world. Paderewski arranged to have some Kerntopf pianos, up to then known only in Poland, shipped to Paris and exhibited. They won a gold medal (after Paderewski had happily and cleverly used every ounce of influence he had with every one of the judges). The fact that his pianos—Polish pianos—had come out so well in international competition was one of the greatest events in Edward Kerntopf’s life. It would never be possible to repay Edward’s kindness, Paderewski thought, but at least he had been able to do something. Many people who reach sudden, dazzling success find it all too easy to forget the people who helped to bring it about. It was one of Paderewski’s principal characteristics, from his boyhood to his old age, that he never forgot his friends at home.
The road had led him from Warsaw to Vienna to Paris. To continue his conquest of the musical world, Paderewski now turned to London. As his ship pitched its way across the Channel, the seasick artist was in no mood for optimism. The conquest of one city, he knew, did not guarantee success in another city. London in particular had always maintained a chilly “show me” attitude toward artists who came supplied with flowery reviews from foreign critics. Naturally anyone who arrived in the British capital preceded by rave notices like Paderewski’s would be under high suspicion.
It came as a nasty shock to Paderewski to find that his London manager, Daniel Mayer, a beginner in the field, had plastered the city with posters advertising the appearance of the “Lion of Paris.” Paderewski, a Pole, knew better than the English Mr. Mayer that Londoners simply did not care for this sort of thing. “You make me sound like an incoming circus,” he roared at his overeager manager.
Paderewski’s gloomy predictions about his first London appearance turned out to be one hundred percent correct. The night was wet and foggy; the hall was half empty; the audience was chilly. The artist, so sensitive to the emotions of the audience, was appalled. And the reviews were ghastly. “Vulgar,” “violent,” “much noise and little music,” “the clay and the jangle of metal,” he read about himself in the London papers. The critics seemed determined to cut the lion down to the size of a small tabby cat.
Today we have our own opinion about the cautious critics who complained so bitterly because Paderewski’s playing was “utterly at variance with the traditional methods.” In England the “traditional methods” of playing certain unfortunate composers often meant rather spineless, languishing, ladylike performances. Paderewski’s intense vitality and virility startled the conservative critics of that Victorian era. It would take some getting used to!
After two slightly more successful London concerts, Paderewski went on a tour of the smaller cities. Poor Mr. Daniel Mayer set out on the road with a heavy heart, for he looked forward to financial disaster. To his horror, Paderewski had firmly insisted that his publicity circulars for the provinces should reprint all his London reviews complete! Mr. Mayer, like every other manager in the business, believed in picking out the best and kindest remarks from reviews and cleverly stringing them together with “...” and “...,” thus giving the impression that all the critics had thought everything was wonderful. Yet Paderewski had vetoed this simple business procedure for a reason that appalled his poor manager. He said it was dishonest. Dishonest! Who cared about honesty in publicity releases, Mr. Mayer moaned to himself. Results at the box office were what counted! And who had ever heard of a rising concert artist with a conscience. It was a luxury he could not afford.
The admiring lady was Queen Victoria.
To Mr. Mayer’s vast surprise, Paderewski’s honesty turned out to be the best policy, financially as well as morally. The people of the smaller English towns felt—quite correctly—that Londoners looked down on them. For this reason they leaned over backwards to avoid following the lead of the big city in making decisions about anything, even the abilities of an unknown artist. The very fact that the London critics had given him rough treatment was a point in his favor. And the fact that he had circulated all of his reviews, good and bad, piqued their curiosity as nothing else could have done. Curiosity and sympathy are a powerful combination at the box office.
Paderewski finished his tour with the sweet sounds of success ringing in his ears. By the time he returned to London, his complete triumph all over the rest of England had been duly noticed. The lines formed at dawn outside the box office of St. James Hall on the days of his concerts.
His appealing personality and flawless manners quickly made Paderewski a popular figure in London society. He made friends among British statesmen as easily as he did among British musicians. The former gentlemen were surprised at his grasp of so many subjects besides music. And the authority with which this romantic-looking, golden-haired pianist discussed international affairs astounded them. The composer Saint-Saens had, with typical French acumen, already summed up Paderewski’s gifts. “Paderewski?” he had said one evening, shortly after the Paris debut. “He is a genius who happens to play the piano!”
It was at this time that the most famous of all Paderewski portraits was made. It was a pencil drawing by the distinguished British artist, Edward Burne-Jones. The picture came into being in a delightful way. As Burne-Jones was walking down the street one day, he passed a young man with a radiant face and a halo of red-gold hair. The artist was so struck by this apparition that he rushed around the block quickly in order to pass it again. Then he rushed back home and announced to the astonished household, “I have just seen an archangel walking on the London pavement!” He grabbed a pencil and rapidly sketched what he could remember of the archangel’s appearance.
A few days later Paderewski was brought by a mutual friend to pay a call on Burne-Jones. Much to his surprise he was met by his host not with a polite British greeting, but with an ecstatic cry, “It’s my archangel!” Before the astonished visitor could say a word, the artist had seized the unfinished picture and gone to work on it.
A lady who heard him play that year wrote about it this way in her diary: “Went to the green drawing room and heard Monsieur Paderewski play on the piano. He does so quite marvelously, such power and such tender feeling. I really think he is quite equal to Rubinstein. He is young, about 28, with a sort of aureole of red hair standing out.”
The admiring lady was Queen Victoria. Another victory had been won in his complete conquest of England.
It was time to move on now and the logical world to be conquered next was the new one. In 1891, the firm of Steinway and Sons in New York offered Paderewski a contract for eighty concerts with a guarantee of $30,000. What young artist could refuse such an offer? On November 3, 1891, Paderewski sailed for New York.
Carnegie Hall in New York City has been the goal of musicians from all over the world for nearly three quarters of a century. But on November 17, 1891, when the new European artist first played there for an audience that had paid a total of only $500 to hear him, the famous hall was barely six months old.
Paderewski was still slightly numb from his first impressions of the world he had come to conquer! After a long, rough crossing, his ship had docked late on a rainy night. In those days the first view of New York from the harbor was by no means the thrilling sight it is today. The famous skyline did not yet exist and the unlit waterfront consisted of a few dirty, low-lying buildings.
Almost as depressing as the scenery was Mr. Charles F. Tretbar, the Steinway representative who met him at the dock with this cheering welcome: “Well, Mr. Paderewski, we hear you have had a brilliant success in London and Paris. But let me tell you, you need not expect anything like that here in America. We have heard them all, all the pianists, all the great ones, and our demands are very exacting. We are not easily pleased here! Besides, everyone knows that piano playing is not as well rewarded as singing or violin playing, so don’t expect any extraordinary audiences. I’ve done my best for you, but it won’t amount to much!”
Paderewski, his secretary, and his luggage, were then deposited at a dismal hotel in Union Square where the two men spent the night routing battalions of mice and bedbugs. Although they were moved to a good hotel the next day, with the profound apologies of Mr. Steinway himself, the lost night had not helped to put Paderewski in a festive mood for his first concert. Nor had his first look at the schedule of his tour arranged by Mr. Tretbar. To his dismay, he found that he was advertised for six solo recitals and three concerts with orchestra during the first two weeks. Each orchestral concert included two concertos. He would be playing six different concertos within six days.
Paderewski was learning the hard way about the energetic all-out American way of doing things! In Europe, a pianist who played six different concertos in one season, much less one week, would be considered a wonder. Four of the concertos he could easily manage, but the other two, although he had played them once or twice, were not really ready for public performance.
All of these troublesome facts, however, he put out of his mind when he walked out onto the stage of Carnegie Hall for the first time and began to play the Saint-Saens C minor Concerto. It was the same work he had played with the Lamoureux Orchestra in Paris. This time he was accompanied by the Symphony Society of New York City, under its handsome young conductor, Walter Damrosch. The evening closed with his own concerto, which gave the New York critics a chance to judge him as a composer as well as a pianist.
But poor Paderewski had little time after the concert that night to worry about the next day’s reviews. Damrosch had scheduled the rehearsal for the next concert at ten o’clock in the morning. And at this second concert he was to play not only the Beethoven “Emperor” Concerto and the Schumann Concerto, but, as a bonus for the audience, the fiendishly difficult Hungarian Fantasia for piano and orchestra by Liszt.
Paderewski went back to his new hotel physically exhausted, as always after a concert, and began practicing for the next day’s work. He had not struck more than six chords before there was an agitated knocking at the door. The manager of the hotel stood outside, wringing his hands.
“Mr. Paderewski! Playing the piano at this hour?”
“But I have to practice for my next concert. And nighttime is the only time I have free!”
“Yes, but Mr. Paderewski, we have so many elderly people living in the hotel. We can’t possibly have you practicing the piano at midnight. You can understand that!”
He could understand it, yes, but what could he do about it? Suddenly from the depth of his memory came a clear picture of the Kerntopf factory in Warsaw, with its room after room of inviting pianos. He grabbed his coat and called to his secretary, “Goerlitz! Come on! We’re going out!”
“Going out? At this hour? Where to?”
“To the Steinway warehouse!”
The nightwatchman at the Fourteenth Street office was surprised to be roused from his slumbers by a wild-eyed man pounding at the door. “I must have presented a strange appearance,” Paderewski recalled. “The watchman, however, opened the room where the pianos were stored, and there, in that cold and gloomy loft, I began practicing. There were no lights except the two candles on the piano. It must have been a strange sight as I think back on it—the empty room, with two fluttering candles and the two men, the night watchman and my secretary, each snoring loudly in his corner as I worked on until morning. That was all I had for inspiration!”
Yet in spite of his fatigue, this concert was a greater success than the first one. The reviews of the debut had been of the sort usually described as “mixed.” But after the second concert the New York Times headlined its account with the flat statement, “The Success of Ignace Jan Paderewski is Assured.”
His success might be assured, but poor Ignace Jan Paderewski himself was in sad shape as he doggedly returned to the Steinway warehouse to practice the arm-wrenching Rubinstein Concerto. How long, he wondered, could he go on at his present pace? No wonder Rubinstein himself had made only one American tour in his life and had said, when begged to return, “May Heaven preserve us from such slavery!”
The third concert, a matinee for which he had practiced a total of seventeen hours, was an unqualified triumph, “the real beginning of my career in America.” It was not only the critics who were ecstatic. So was Mr. Tretbar. Three thousand dollars, an unheard-of amount of money for a single concert, was taken in at the box office. By the end of the season, Paderewski’s appearance in the same hall would bring in nearly twice that amount.
Mr. Steinway himself, although pleased by the box office receipts, did not really care whether he made money out of these concerts. The Steinway firm had thought of the Paderewski tour as a means of advertising its pianos. And what an inspiration the idea turned out to be! In the mind of the public the name “Steinway” became inextricably linked with the name “Paderewski,” and the latter was about to move into the household-word category.
Successful as it undoubtedly was, the first American season was full of trials—some small, one a near tragedy. Mr. Tretbar (who, it should be recorded, later became Paderewski’s staunch friend and ally) had indeed had little faith in the success of just one more piano player from Europe. To Paderewski’s great annoyance he found that his six solo recitals to be given the week after the three orchestral concerts would not be played in Carnegie Hall, but in a small recital room in Madison Square Garden.
“But why?” he asked. “Why? I’ve just filled Carnegie Hall for you! Why should I play my recitals in a small place?”
Mr. Tretbar shrugged. A solo piano recital would never fill Carnegie Hall, he said. Besides, it was in the contract that Mr. Paderewski would play where and when he was told to play, and he was being told to play in the small hall of Madison Square Garden!
He played three out of six recitals there. When hundreds of would-be ticket-buyers were turned away, disappointed, from the third one, Mr. Tretbar had nothing whatever to say. Mr. Steinway himself ordered the last three recitals moved to Carnegie Hall.
Paderewski’s brilliant concerts shed a special lustre over the new hall which until then had simply been one of several possible places to appear in New York City. But soon a new artist’s appearance in Carnegie Hall came to be regarded as the real sign that he had “arrived.” It was Paderewski’s successes there that established the trend more than any other single factor.
Paderewski left New York with the audiences and critics alike solidly behind him. His New York success was repeated all over the country. Although he was naturally delighted to play before packed houses, the economic aspects of the tour were more and more irritating. He was being paid an average of $375 for each appearance, yet the box office income was running upwards of $3,000! Far more serious was the frightening problem that soon began to plague him. As the strenuous weeks wore on, as solo recitals and orchestral concerts piled up, the strain of playing so often in public began to produce a violent physical reaction in his right arm. Before long he found himself playing in almost constant pain. The actual physical basis of his trouble lay in the action of the Steinway pianos of that day. As Paderewski said, they were “universally recognized as the most marvelous instruments in the world.” But they had an action that he found extremely heavy and tiring. It simply took too much pressure to move the keys. After much arguing back and forth he finally persuaded the factory to regulate the action of the seven pianos he was using for the tour.
The relief was immense and the discomfort in his arm, although still present, became bearable. Then one dreadful night in Rochester, as he was playing the opening chords of his recital, he felt an excruciating pain tear through his right arm. (Afterwards, when it was too late, he found out what had happened. The piano used in the Rochester concert had just come back from the factory, where a new and unbriefed workman had carefully changed the action back to its original stiffness.) Yet Paderewski stayed on the platform to play the Beethoven “Appassionata” Sonata, one of the most taxing works in the repertoire. He finished the program in a state of near collapse, then rushed off to find a doctor, and to hear the terrifying truth. He had torn some tendons in his right arm and could no longer move his fourth finger. The doctor said, “The situation is very grave, and there is nothing that I can do for you. Nothing but time will help. You must rest.” This was easy advice to give, but how does a pianist rest when he has concerts ahead of him for which tickets have been sold? Paderewski did it by rearranging the fingering in every piece of music on his programs so that he could play with only four of the fingers on his right hand. This is like asking a baseball pitcher to fire a curve ball without using his thumb!
It was not the first time that Paderewski had demonstrated the peculiar iron of his constitution. It was certainly not the last.
At the end of the tour he returned to New York exhausted and discouraged, but relieved that the gruelling months were over. He was met by news that both pleased and horrified him. Mr. Steinway, all smiles, announced that various cities not included in the tour were besieging the office with requests for Paderewski! “Now Paderewski,” he said expansively, “you are going to give those extra concerts and we will pay all expenses—everything. Every cent that is taken in will be clear gain for you. That will be our small contribution to reward you for what was, I am sorry to say, badly managed at the beginning of your tour.”
Generosity of spirit was a factor that meant a great deal to Paderewski, but although Mr. Steinway’s thoughtfulness touched him, he was aghast at the thought of playing more concerts. He was also struck by the sobering thought that since his career had probably been wrecked forever by this tour, he might as well make the most of it. He gave the concerts and made more from the extra ones than he had made out of all the others put together.
Paderewski’s bleak conviction that the American tour might be his last happily proved to be mistaken. Actually it was only the first of twenty triumphant tours during which he would play more than fifteen hundred concerts for more than five million people. Only one other person has ever equaled his success at the box office—the beloved soprano, Amelita Galli-Curci. The two artists still stand supreme as the greatest money-makers in the musical history of America.
During those American tours, Paderewski did much more than make music and money. He also made friends in high places—firm, devoted friends who respected him for his great spirit as well as for his fleet fingers. And he captured the imagination and affection of the American public as no other artist has ever done.
How to describe Paderewski’s electrifying effect on the public! Many people have tried. Arthur Loesser, in his fascinating book, MEN, WOMEN AND PIANOS, does it as well as anyone. He says: “The most flaming pianistic glory in America’s history broke out when the Steinways first put forth Ignace Paderewski in the autumn of 1891. He was indeed a performer of very high ability, an artist of unusual expressive power; yet that was only one element of his peculiar appeal. His total personality was just what, in the American idea, a concert pianist’s ought to be, if one were to marvel at him and respect him at the same time. His chrysanthemum of pale red hair, the feminine dreaminess and brooding of his looks coupled with his aggressive, solid muscularity—all this was strange and might have seemed ridiculous to Philistines. But the reserve of his bearing, the hypnotic deliberateness and lordly courtesy of his movements, were the signs of a profound inner dignity before which a measure of awe could not fail to be felt. He seemed, verily, the prince of a foreign realm. No pianist has ever captured the American imagination as he did, keeping his hold over it for thirty years. He became a legend: his mispronounced name drew farmers from their barns, schoolboys from their baseball, real estate speculators from their offices—all manner of unlikely persons from their dens—into a concert hall to have a look and a listen at him.”
The day would come when Paderewski’s hold over the affection of the American public would mean more to him—and to his country—than he could even begin to imagine as he sailed back to Europe at the end of his first visit to America.
The money he had made in America was important to him for one reason: Alfred. At last he was able to afford the kind of country holiday he felt would be best for the boy’s health. Father and son spent a few wonderful months together in northern France. To his great joy, both his sister, Antonina, and Edward Kerntopf came from Poland for a visit. Antonina brought with her the love and blessings of their father, Jan Paderewski, who was too ill to travel, but the sister could report at first hand how his great pride in his son had illumined the good man’s last years.
While Paderewski gave his sore arm a chance to recuperate, he devoted himself to composing. He began work on an opera called “Manru,” a folk story of the gypsies who lived in the Tatra Mountains of which he had such happy memories.
His return to the stage was delayed for over a year, for the injured arm was not responding well to the treatments of the numerous doctors who worked on it. The combination of time and a gifted Parisian masseur finally restored the use of his fourth finger, but it never, he felt, regained its original strength.
It was the last year off he would have for some time. During the next decade his spiraling career would carry him at dizzying speed over thousands of miles on five continents. In America, at least, he quickly found a way around the tyranny of train schedules and hotel reservations. He rented his own private Pullman car. In it, together with his secretary, chef and piano tuner, he traveled all over America. The Pullman car was the home where he lived, ate, slept, and practiced during his tours. Although it cost him the equivalent of twenty-five first class fares, it was well worth it. It was, in fact, the reason why his tours could include so many out-of-the-way places and why so many people had a chance to hear him. But the principal advantage to railroad living was the fact that at last he could practice as loud, as long, and as late as he wished!