Perhaps he has summed himself and his aims as well as any one else could sum them up. "If I were asked," said the great pianist to an interviewer, "to name the chief qualification of a great pianist, apart from technical excellence, I should answer in a word, genius. That is the spark which fires every heart, that is the voice which all men stop to hear! Lacking genius, your pianist is simply a player—an artist, perhaps—whose work is politely listened to or admired in moderation as a musical tour de force. He leaves his hearers cold, nor is the appeal which he makes through the medium of his art, a universal one. And here let me say, referring to the celebrated 'paradox' of Diderot, that I am firmly of the belief that the pianist, in order to produce the finest and most delicate effects must feel what he is playing, identify himself absolutely with his work, be in sympathy with the composition in its entirety, as well as with its every shade of expression. Only so shall he speak to that immense audience which ever depends on perfect art. Yet—and here is a paradox indeed—he must put his own personality resolutely, triumphantly into his interpretation of the composer's ideas."
IX AS COMPOSER
IGNAZ PADEREWSKI
From a bust by Mr. Emil Fuchs, reproduced by the kind permission of the sculptor.
It will be remembered that Paderewski began his musical career with the aim of being a composer, and through all the stress of his life as a virtuoso he has never lost sight of that aim. Indeed, he has more than once expressed the intention of retiring gradually from the concert platform in order that he may devote all his time to composition. The work he has already done is not to be passed over lightly as a pianist's music. Paderewski has certainly more originality than Rubinstein, and as he is now only in his forty-seventh year there is every possibility that he will make a name for himself as composer. It has already been related that Paderewski was by way of being a prodigy composer. At the early age of seven he wrote a set of Polish dances, but none of his compositions was published until he was twenty-two years of age. These early works, numbering some forty pieces, include Mazardas, Polonaises, Krakowiaks, and other Polish dances, a Caprice, an Intermezzo, a Sarabande, an Elegy, and many Mélodies, all of them surcharged with national spirit. It is facile criticism to trace the influence of Chopin in these pianoforte pieces of Paderewski's, and it is too often forgotten that many of the characteristics of the great composer's music were drawn from Polish music. Paderewski himself once remarked on this point: "The moment you try to be national, every one cries out that you are imitating Chopin, whereas the truth is that Chopin adopted all the most marked characteristics of our national music so completely that it is impossible not to resemble him in externals, though your methods and ideas may be absolutely your own."
Of the smaller compositions of Paderewski the most famous is, of course, the Minuet, which has nothing in it of Polish colour, but is a charming and skilful essay in the old style. A writer in a German periodical has told an amusing, if apocryphal story of this Minuet. "When Paderewski was a professor at the Warsaw Conservatoire, he was a frequent visitor at my house, and one evening I remarked that no living composer could be compared with Mozart. Paderewski's only reply was a shrug of the shoulders, but the next day he came back, and, sitting down at the piano, said, 'I should like to play you a little piece of Mozart's which you perhaps do not know.' He then played the Minuet. I was enchanted with it and cried, 'Now you will yourself acknowledge that nobody of our time could furnish us with a composition like that.' 'Well,' answered Paderewski, 'this Minuet is mine.'" The worthy German writer could have had but a superficial knowledge of Mozart's style of harmony. But the Minuet is certainly a charming little piece. Hardly less remarkable in its daintiness is the "Chant du Voyageur," number 3 of Opus 8, and the Thème Varié, Opus 11 is very skilful in its harmonic treatment of a naïve, eighteenth century tune. The Variations and Fugue and Humoresques à l'antique enable one to understand how Paderewski can play Scarlatti, Couperin, and Rameau with such intimate sympathy. These works may be said to represent one side of his talent, perhaps not the most original. In direct contrast with them are his fiery Polish dances—his Cracovienne and Polonaises. In his later compositions he has given up his imitations of the antique and has been gradually finding his own utterance in the idiom of national music. In his early life, however, he composed a short sonata for violin and piano, which, as far as I know, has not been performed in England; but, of course, the pianoforte sonata in A minor, Op. 17, which was written when he was twenty-eight years of age, is the most important contribution in a more or less "classical" style which has come from his pen. It served to introduce Paderewski as a composer to an English audience on the occasion of his first recitals at St. James's Hall in 1890. "In point of form this Concerto," wrote Mr. C. A. Barry in his analytical notes, "which is far more a matter of evolution than a stringing together of tunes, closely follows the traditionally classical lines, and is strikingly free from irrelevant and episodical passages, except such as immediately grow out of the subject-matter. In spirit it is strongly pervaded by the characteristics of Polish national music, with its proud, chivalrous and dreamy accents." Much of the music is of a virtuoso character, but the Romanza, an Andante, is a little gem of inspiration, and the finale is full of vivacity and spirit. Paderewski himself makes a very effective composition of this Concerto.