GREAT PADEREWSKI

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 37, 14 February 1933, Page 14

GREAT PADEREWSKI

PIANIST AND STATESMAN

HIS RETURN TO LONDON

Once and once only has Paderewski played in London 'to half-empty benches: at his first concert here, which was on 9th May, 1890, at the old St. James' Hall (writes Richard Capell in tho "Daily Mail"). Paderewski -was then 29. The young Pole, superb in his strength and good looks and a technical command of the piano that was to make the effect of a new wind blowing through the "Victorian musical world, had already a name in Vienna and Paris. The word had not reached London on the day of his first concert. But that first concert was good enough. From that day onwards the name Paderewski (though more often than not_ mispronounced— for the Polish "w" is more or less our "v") has beenv a romantic symbol and a charm. We hear echoes of Paderewski's first London performances in the musical criticism (which has lately been republished) of Me Bernard Shaw. For Mr. Shaw Paderewski was "an immensely spirited young harmonious blacksmith, who puts a concerto on the piano as upon an anvil, and hammers it out with an exuberant -enjoyment of the swing and_ strength of the proceeding." Again "his concerto was over, the audi-enee-in wild enthusiasm, and the pianoforte a wreck." '■.-■■ TRYING YOUTH. Paderewski had in 1890 been playing in public for 14 years. His youth had not been easy. He had suffered. a cruel grief in the | death of his first wife. There has always been,, along with the conquering power of the man, an element of heroic tragedy in his art. ■ • He came from Poland, the olassic land of suffering but undefeated patriotism—the. stricken and partitioned country whose spirit the .whole musical world has for the last contury thought of in the terms of Chopin's music, music bleeding from a hundred wounds, but with pride unbowed io. the extremity of disaster. • In the comfortable England of tho '1890"s,- ■ Paderewski came- "to play -Chopin's challenging. Polonaises and .Ballades of the. bjeoding heart—4o pjay them not as elegant concert-piecos, but as" the' direct' passionate message -from tho tragic land. He seemed the incarnation of romantic heroism. To ignore the fact that the noble and virile beauty of the great artist's person has had nothing to do with the triumphs of his career would be to lack candour. To think of Paderewski is to evoke not only memories of his grand, tremendous piano-playing, ' but also the famous leonine-head—the head which Bume-Jones's beautiful profile drawing of the period of the pianist's first London visit has recorded for all. time.. • A NATURAL LEADER. The man's art, wherein no pettiness has place,, is.confirmed in the strength of his handshake, and his attitude toward music is borne put in his life, in his superb acts of generosity, and m a kind of aristocratic simplicity which withers all cynicism and mere smartness with a. look.' The homage the world has .paid to Paderewski is in good paTt its recognition of a natural leader of men. ... Bather less than thirty years after Paderewski had first been allusively pleading Poland's cause -with his Chopm-playing at St. James's Hall, he had abandoned the role of bard for that of man of action. The story of his political work for his country during the war is one of the romances of our age, without parallel in-ihe rest of the history of music.' During the war, after many concerts given for the war-victims' relief funds, Paderewski abandoned music and organised in America the Polish Legion, wnich was later to fight inSFrance. The musician was revealed as a commanding and thrilling orator. In 1917-18 he was recognised at Washington as the representative of the, Polish people He returned to Poland in January, 1919 to be given a national hero's welcome' and to be made Prime Minister, and the incidents of that tumultuous time included more than one attempted assassination. Paderewski was the head of the Polish delegation at the Paris Peaco Conference, and was the first Polish delegate to the Council of Ambassa--1990 t0 th 6 League of Nations in When in 1923 he once more returned to the London concert-platform, after his high, adventures on the larger stage he was a man of legend. He had not played in London for nine years. Amid the regular artists of the concert season Padereswski's appearance was that of some wonderful heraldic animal amoiiEr ordinary lions and tigers. '