Music: Pianist Patriot

Twenty years ago the title of “world’s most famous musician” belonged to a shockheaded Pole named Ignace Jan Paderewski. Flame-haired Virtuoso Paderewski was the greatest pianist of his time and one of its most lionized personalities. Women swooned at his concerts, pursued him to beg a lock of his long red-gold hair. Kings and cabbageheads applauded him. Even among people who never went near a concert hall “Paderoosky” was a name to conjure with.

When the World War broke out Pianist Paderewski’s career took an abrupt turn. A fervent patriot, he foresaw a chance for the independence of his native Poland, dedicated his every effort to this cause. His acquaintance with nearly all the powerful and famous figures of the world made him Poland’s best ambassador. At War’s end Poland was free, and Paderewski virtually retired from the concert platform to become its first Premier.

Today, 77-year-old, white-haired Paderewski lives quietly in a sprawling baroque villa at Merges, Switzerland. His careers as No. 1 Pianist and No. 1 Pole are both long past. This week, with the collaboration of Actress-Author Mary Lawton, he publishes a volume of memoirs* covering the first of these two careers (1860-1914), promises another volume at a later date.

Unlike many famous musicians, Paderewski was no infant prodigy. Though he took piano, violin, cello and even trumpet lessons at an early age, his teachers at the Warsaw Conservatory considered him a promising composer rather than a concert artist. Not until he was 28 did he manage to make his debut in-Paris; even then he knew only enough music to fill one program. Debutant Paderewski had to go back and learn more pieces before he could appear again. But this he did with dogged determination, and soon the musical world began to realize that the composer of the famous Minuet could also play the piano a little better than anybody else in the world.

Though Patriot-Pianist Paderewski has lived to see his dreams of Polish independence realized and himself a legend in the history of music, it is naturally toward his heyday, the Victorian era, that his thoughts most fondly turn. “The passing of that great period, the nineties,” he muses, “brought to a close a tremendous era, a flowering of all that was most beautiful and elegant in life. We shall not see its like again.”

* THE PADEREWSKI MEMOIRS—Paderewski and Mary Lawton—Scribner ($3.75).