Paderewski was still slightly numb from his first impressions of the world he had come to conquer! After a long, rough crossing, his ship had docked late on a rainy night. In those days the first view of New York from the harbor was by no means the thrilling sight it is today. The famous skyline did not yet exist and the unlit waterfront consisted of a few dirty, low-lying buildings.
Almost as depressing as the scenery was Mr. Charles F. Tretbar, the Steinway representative who met him at the dock with this cheering welcome: “Well, Mr. Paderewski, we hear you have had a brilliant success in London and Paris. But let me tell you, you need not expect anything like that here in America. We have heard them all, all the pianists, all the great ones, and our demands are very exacting. We are not easily pleased here! Besides, everyone knows that piano playing is not as well rewarded as singing or violin playing, so don’t expect any extraordinary audiences. I’ve done my best for you, but it won’t amount to much!”
Paderewski, his secretary, and his luggage, were then deposited at a dismal hotel in Union Square where the two men spent the night routing battalions of mice and bedbugs. Although they were moved to a good hotel the next day, with the profound apologies of Mr. Steinway himself, the lost night had not helped to put Paderewski in a festive mood for his first concert. Nor had his first look at the schedule of his tour arranged by Mr. Tretbar. To his dismay, he found that he was advertised for six solo recitals and three concerts with orchestra during the first two weeks. Each orchestral concert included two concertos. He would be playing six different concertos within six days.
Paderewski was learning the hard way about the energetic all-out American way of doing things! In Europe, a pianist who played six different concertos in one season, much less one week, would be considered a wonder. Four of the concertos he could easily manage, but the other two, although he had played them once or twice, were not really ready for public performance.
All of these troublesome facts, however, he put out of his mind when he walked out onto the stage of Carnegie Hall for the first time and began to play the Saint-Saens C minor Concerto. It was the same work he had played with the Lamoureux Orchestra in Paris. This time he was accompanied by the Symphony Society of New York City, under its handsome young conductor, Walter Damrosch. The evening closed with his own concerto, which gave the New York critics a chance to judge him as a composer as well as a pianist.
But poor Paderewski had little time after the concert that night to worry about the next day’s reviews. Damrosch had scheduled the rehearsal for the next concert at ten o’clock in the morning. And at this second concert he was to play not only the Beethoven “Emperor” Concerto and the Schumann Concerto, but, as a bonus for the audience, the fiendishly difficult Hungarian Fantasia for piano and orchestra by Liszt.
Paderewski went back to his new hotel physically exhausted, as always after a concert, and began practicing for the next day’s work. He had not struck more than six chords before there was an agitated knocking at the door. The manager of the hotel stood outside, wringing his hands.
“Mr. Paderewski! Playing the piano at this hour?”
“But I have to practice for my next concert. And nighttime is the only time I have free!”
“Yes, but Mr. Paderewski, we have so many elderly people living in the hotel. We can’t possibly have you practicing the piano at midnight. You can understand that!”