PADEREWSKI – An Appreciation

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 107, 11 July 1941, Page 3

PADEREWSKI – An Appreciation

By

L. D.

AUSTIN

HO that ‘had the good fortune to see and hear Paderewski in his prime could ever forget the personal impression — that ineffaceable picture of a sublime artist crowned with an aureole of redgold hair? In pre1914 London it was the fashion for instrumental recitals by eminent soloists to be given during the afternoon-even-ing concerts being, for some mysterious reason, restricted

almost entirely to orchestral functions, and through the western windows of St. James’s Hall, Piccadilly, between 3 and 5 p.m. on a bright summer day, the declining sun was wont to throw a brilliant beam on to the concert platform. Some artists objected to this and would have the light excluded by lowering the blinds. But not so Paderewski, who always had an eye for theatrical effect. Anything more striking than the view presented by this shaft of sunlight illuminating his marvellous head of hair can scarcely be conceived. Nothing even remotely like it had ever previously been seen in London, nor have we witnessed its parallel since. Exactly how much the great Polish artist owed, first, to his picturesque personality, and second, to his name, cannot possibly be estimated. " Paderewski" was a wonderful name, and though rarely correctly pronounced by insular British lips, it conveyed a world of romantic sentiment on paper; printed in gigantic scarlet capitals across posters and programmes it exerted from the first an indescribable and compelling spell, But whatever degree of popularity may have been derived from these extraneous circumstances, behind them stood a musician of superlative talent, converted into genius by the traditional capacity for taking infinite pains. Contrary to general belief, Paderewski was no heaven-born pianist; in the strictly technical sense he did not primarily belong to the Virtuoso class; what he achieved came from sheer hard workall the more meritorious because he was physically ill-suited to the role of con-cert-pianist, His hands, somewhat large

and clumsy looking, with long, tapering fingers, were just the reverse of the ideal keyboard manipulators; and only by dint of incredible long hours of practice was he able to overcome technical difficulties which far less gifted performers mastered much more easily. No sign of these superhuman preliminary exertions, however, appeared when Paderewski played. He had a musical soul that shone through the maze of

technicality and remained undimmed by the demands of virtuosity. If he never reached the transcendant mechanical heights of some other pianists, he could present the intellectual and romantic aspect of pianoforte composition in a way peculiarly individual and satisfying. I have never heard anyone play Chopin’s Nocturnes as Paderewski played them, nor are we likely ever again to experience such perfection of pianistic expression. The modern virtuoso is a business-like person who in outward appearance differs in no wise from the everyday man of affairs. Paderewski was the last link with the tradition of Liszt-the final representative of legendary musical coiffure, and of the concert-platform grand manner. He was the sole surviving Pianistic aristocrat to resist the guillotine of prosaic modernism. Take him for all in all, we ne’er shall look upon his like again.