We have a report about it from a man who was himself one of the world’s greatest pianists, and no tribute can be held in higher regard than that spoken by one artist about another. Alfred Cortot said of Paderewski’s Paris debut, “He appeared with the suddenness of a lightning stroke, making a blurring, an eruption in our hearts. Instead of a pianist, an inspired poet took possession of the keyboard.”
The listeners, charmed from the first moment by the romantic appearance of the newcomer, grew more and more enthusiastic with each succeeding piece. But after the last encore—the encores lasted for nearly an hour—the audience was on its feet thundering its approval.
Two men in the audience had better things to do than shout and applaud. The minute the last note had died away, conductors Colonne and Lamoureux leaped to their feet and began a race to the platform. Each man was determined to get there first. Lamoureux, by a masterpiece of broken field running around cheering Polish counts, French dukes, and assorted musicians, won the race. “Monsieur,” he puffed, hearing Colonne slide to a stop behind him, “I have the honor to invite you to appear as soloist in three weeks with the Lamoureux Orchestra!”
Lamoureux and other new friends pressed the young pianist to arrange several additional solo recitals at once. “You must strike again while this enthusiasm lasts,” they told him. “You must reinforce this first success, or people will quickly forget you.” All professional artists are aware of the fickleness of the public. Paderewski knew what good advice his friends were giving him. The night’s triumph, therefore, instead of making him happy, plunged him into absolute misery.
Why? Because the modest young man, encouraged to try his luck by his success in Vienna, had come to Paris with exactly one program prepared. And he had just finished playing it! He could have postponed his Paris debut until he had a larger repertoire, but it had never once occurred to him that he would be called upon to play anything in Paris but his one recital. And now!
“It’s impossible,” he told himself on that triumphant evening of March 3. The first program—the only program—had taken him eight months to prepare to his satisfaction. Now he was asked to prepare a second program in three weeks! “It’s absolutely impossible! I can’t even think about it!”
On the morning of March 4, he said, “Well—maybe I could try—”
On the evening of March 23 he appeared with the Lamoureux Orchestra in the Saint-Saens Piano Concerto in C minor. He played it, said the city’s toughest music critic, “in a superb and masterful manner.” Critics should be embarrassed, the writer added, to praise Paderewski, because they had been so free and easy in using superlatives to describe other pianists. As a result, there was now a shortage of new words by which to describe the particular genius of the Polish artist. Another newspaper promptly labelled him “the Lion of Paris.”
The faster Paderewski’s career gathered speed, the harder he worked, “always struggling for perfection, pushing on and on to that ever-receding faraway peak of attainment,” he would write of those days. “All work is like that.... The summit of the mountain is always farther and farther away.” He went back to Vienna and prepared more and more programs, and added concerto after concerto to his growing list. He accepted more and better engagements with bigger and bigger box office receipts to show for them. He toured the French provinces—Lyons ... Nantes ... Bordeaux ... Tours.... Then on to Antwerp ... Brussels ... Liège ... and Vienna again. And always Paris. After three successful seasons in Paris he felt like a real veteran of the concert stage.
The financial rewards of success were important to him because of Alfred, who was now nine years old. It had been evident from the time he was a year old that the little boy, mentally so alert, was not developing well physically. In those days doctors could do very little to improve or even to diagnose his condition. It would seem that he suffered from a congenital weakness of the spine, and possibly of the heart. “Always in the foreground,” his father wrote, “was the menace of his illness, a constantly increasing problem to be met. He had his tutors at this time and he was intelligent and gifted. He had a brilliant, clear mind; he loved music too. It was difficult to take him to concerts, but he often went to recitals at the Salle Erard which we could manage easily and he was very happy to go, and touchingly proud of me at these concerts. It was a great excitement to him, a stimulant to his mind. Poor child, he was completely cut off from everything in life except intellectual things, by his great infirmity.”