Thunderer

Thunderer

"Please tell Mr. Copper," a grizzled old man sat at dinner aboard train, "that the meat was excellent, the salad marvelous, and the pastry better than ever." The waiter came back. "Mr. Copper's compliments, and he reminds you, sir, that the soup was good too."

Fifteen times, over a span of twenty-five years, Chef James Copper has toured the U. S., serving the palate of Pianist Ignace Jan Paderewski. His has been an important post. Importantly he has filled it. He has granted interviews to pressmen when Paderewski could not be disturbed, protected him with frying pan and rolling pin from tramps who have besieged his private car. This year he turned seventy-five, was pensioned by the Pullman company, pronounced too old to serve the Great Paderewski. He himself broke the news when Paderewski arrived from Europe, begged the privilege of recommending his friend James Davis.

So, with Chef James Davis, two porters, a transportation and a tour manager, a valet and a masseur, with Mme. Paderewski, her secretary and a Steinway Grand, Ignace Jan Paderewski started last week on another transcontinental tour.

Just as it was always impossible for the great Paderewski to name the ingredients in one of Chef Copper's superlative concoctions, so is it impossible to determine just those qualities that have made Paderewski a great tradition.

The young Paderewski had little in his favor. There was no musical background. His mother died when he was three. His father, a Polish farmer, was banished to Siberia for his mutterings against Russian rule. The boy wanted to be a pianist but he had small, stubby hands that would not reach an octave. His first teacher was a violinist with scant knowledge of the keyboard. . . .

In the U. S. the great Paderewski is called Paderooski, or Paderefski, with Ignaz or Ignace for a first name and Jan or Jean for a second.--But it was Ignacy Jan Paderewski (pronounced correctly Pad-er-rey-ski) who in 1877, a penniless boy of 17, set out on his first concert tour. It was in the dead of winter. He went from one Russian town to another, earned 180 rubles (then about $90/-) in 50 concerts, and a reputation that amounted to less. Despairing, he turned his back on a concert career, went to Warsaw, found himself a handful of pupils and a wife who died a year later, leaving him a paralyzed son. He went to Vienna. Teaching tormented him. He turned pupil himself again, studied two years with Leschetizky, practiced eighteen hours a day. Success, fame, immortality loomed.

Vienna heard him first, then Berlin, Paris, London. The Steinways brought him to Manhattan in 1891. He played in the old Madison Square Garden Concert Hall but it would not hold the crowds, and Carnegie Hall was for the first time used for piano recitals. Paderewski became the rage from one end of the country to the other.

The U. S. entered the War. Paderewski went home to become Premier of Poland. He drew up a plan of an independent Poland. He went to the Peace Conference, helped Poland to its freedom, won international recognition for his distinguished service. For nearly six years he did not touch the piano. Then in 1922 he came back, proved that the stubby fingers had lost none of their fleetness, that the Paderewski tradition was supreme.

This year, as in 1891 and in 1922, critics dispute his talents. To be sure they do it reverently as befits a colossus who has been endowed with intellect, imagination, magnetism. Yet they chide him gently for banging at the piano, for sliding over details and being content too often with broad jagged splashes of color, for limited programs that have been given over and over again. Paderewski takes no notice. He never reads the reviews of his concerts. His life is his own. He sits up far into the night, practices, plays cribbage with Mme. Paderewski, stays in bed until afternoon, has lunch, makes himself ready for a concert, if there is one, does five-finger exercises hour upon hour. His hobbies are billiards, bridge, books, cinemas, his ranch at Paso Robles, California, his villa on Lake Geneva. He is sixty-eight years old, but contrary to vogue, he refuses to name this or any other tour his last.

Again last week he said to pressmen: "There will be no farewells as far as I am concerned. The moment I realize that I am no longer making any progress in music, I shall stop playing, but you may rest assured that the fact will not be heralded."

* Paderewski himself dislikes both, signs himself always I. J. Paderewski. Ignacy is still used in Poland.

/- Contrast with $500,000 made in the U. S. in the season 1922-23.