PADEREWSKI AT THE AGE OF ELEVEN
From a photograph by Mr. A. Schnell, Lausanne
Podolia, the province of South-west Russia in which he was born on November 6, 1860, is a fertile district, of which the Polish population is quite considerable. The pianist's recollection of his childhood on his father's farm in this garden of Russia must be full of pleasantness. The father seems to have been a man of pronounced character. A gentleman farmer of position he was also an ardent patriot. Three years after the birth of his son he was "suspect" and was banished to Siberia. His exile did not last long, but the iron had entered into his soul, and although he lived until 1894 he was broken in spirit and his chief pleasure in life was centred in the growing reputation of his son. The pianist did not inherit his musical talent from his father but from his mother, who died when he was still a child.
It is difficult not to be sceptical of the anecdotes related of the childhood of celebrated musicians. But no doubt some of these stories have a basis of truth, and certainly musical talent shows itself at a very early age. It is said that young Ignace, long before he could play, would climb to the piano-stool and attempt to produce as beautiful a tone as possible. Of the ordinary early tuition he appears to have had none, his mother having died when he was a child. A travelling fiddler gave the boy a few lessons on the piano, but it may be imagined that they were not of a very complete kind. Later on an old teacher of the instrument was engaged to pay a monthly visit to the farm, and he taught the boy and his sister to play simple arrangements of operatic airs. This early life spent away from strong musical influences saved Paderewski from the usual prodigy period in the career of pianist, for it was not until he was twelve years of age that he went to Warsaw where he was able to have regular music-lessons at the Conservatoire. There he studied harmony with Roguski and the piano with Janotha, the father of Natalie Janotha. In those days Paderewski did not show any particular bent towards playing the piano but rather towards composition (he had begun to compose in the old days on the farm) and general musical knowledge. His first public appearances were not so much as pianist as a composer who played his own music. He was then sixteen years old and it would be interesting to know how the immature pianist impressed his Russian audiences. That his technique was of the weakest may be judged from the fact that he afterwards confessed that all the pieces he played were really his own, inasmuch as when he could not manage the difficult passages he merely improvised.
Miss Szumowska, a pupil of Paderewski's, has related a curious anecdote of their first tour. Paderewski "had announced a concert at a certain small town, but, on arriving, found that no piano was to be had for love or money. The general was perfectly willing, on being applied to, to lend his instrument; but when the pianist tried it he found, to his dismay, that it was so badly out of repair that some of the hammers would stick to the strings instead of falling back. However, it was too late to back out. The audience was assembling and in this emergency a bright thought occurred to the pianist. He sent for a switch, and engaged an attendant to whip down the refractory hammers whenever necessary. So bang went the chords and swish went the whip, and the audience liked this improvised duo more, perhaps, than it would have enjoyed the promised piano solo."
The young pianist evidently did not consider that his musical education was complete, for at the end of the tour he returned to Warsaw and studied for two years at the Conservatoire there. At the age of eighteen he was appointed a professor of music and after a year he married. All the world knows that his wife died a year later, leaving him an invalid son in whose existence, until his death a little while ago, the pianist was wrapped up. It was not a very bright beginning of his professional career, for his earnings at the Warsaw Conservatoire had meant comparative privation for his wife and himself. In some natures, perhaps, this early tragedy would have killed ambition but hardly in an artist. Without holding with the comfortable sentimentalists that grief is as necessary to the artist as rain to the flowers, it may be asserted that concentration on work is the natural result of life going awry. This is not, as the sentimentalists imagine, peculiar to genius of the artistic type, but is common to all men who are not invertebrate.
