“Oh, he was all right,” came the answer, “but the other one, you know! The second pianist who was playing at the back of the piano! He was the best, I thought. He worked much harder than the other one. He was the real artist!”
Paderewski worked nearly two years in Berlin, interrupted only by a short period of teaching in Warsaw. There, in addition to a heavy teaching program, he began taking private lessons in Latin, mathematics, literature, and history. He did not want his education to be completely one-sided. He had, at the time, no way of realizing how wise a decision this was.
Paderewski’s studies in composition had been brilliant, and the piano pieces he published were unusually successful. One of the first pianists to play his work in public was the popular Madame Essipoff. She included his Variations in A minor on many of her programs. To Paderewski, however, Essipoff’s greatest attraction was not her success as a pianist but the fact that she was married to the great Theodore Leschetizky.
Leschetizky lived in Vienna, but he was a fellow Pole. He was, in addition, the most famous piano teacher in the world.
The thought of a piano career had remained at the back of Paderewski’s mind during every minute of his years in Warsaw and Berlin, although reason told him to abandon the idea. (So had every teacher with whom he had ever studied.) The turning point in his thinking came about quite casually.
One night his publisher invited him to dinner to meet Anton Rubinstein, a brilliant and famous concert pianist. (He occupied much the same position in his day as his namesake, Artur Rubinstein, occupies in ours.)
The famous pianist was charming to the relatively unknown composer and asked to hear some of his piano compositions. When Paderewski had played several pieces, Rubinstein said, “How very fine they are! You must compose more for the piano!”
Paderewski smiled diffidently. “Oh, I can’t do too well writing for piano,” he said modestly, “because I play so little myself.”
Rubinstein’s eyebrows lifted. “Nonsense!” he said. “You have an inborn technique. You could have a splendid piano career, if you wanted one. I’m sure of it!”
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.