Veteran

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On the evening of Nov. 17, 1891 a sharp-eyed Pole with an incredible stack of red-gold hair walked onto the stage of Manhattan's Carnegie Hall. He bowed suavely, sat down at the piano and struck the opening chords of Saint-Saens' G Minor Piano Concerto. Leading the attendant orchestra was Manhattan's cool, deliberate Walter Damrosch, then a young man of 29.

Ignace Jan Paderewski's U. S. debut was no sensation. A stormy crossing from England on a small steamer had upset his stomach. The unexpected news that he was supposed to play six lengthy piano concertos during his first week in Manhattan had upset his nerves. After the concert he returned in a panic to his hotel room, where he immediately started to practice for his second appearance. The other guests banged angrily on their radiator pipes. So he went out again, woke up the watchman at the Steinway Piano Company's warehouse, and spent the rest of the night practicing by candle-light in a loft where the pianos were stored.

"The second concert," he later remarked, "was much better." But it was not until he had spent another night in the warehouse whipping up concertos by Rubinstein and Chopin that Pianist Paderewski became Manhattan's biggest show since P. T. Barnum's Museum.

At his third concert the audience caught fire. Women crowded to the stage to shower him with bouquets. The box office grossed $3,000. When it was over, Paderewski found himself the lion of Manhattan. His success was repeated in Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia. His first U. S. tour netted him $95,000.

Old Lion. Last week, in spite of doctors' warnings, 78-year-old Paderewski took the road again. Accompanying him from Switzerland was his dapper, diplomatic secretary Sylwin Strakacz, his valet and a curious, high-backed, fringed, 50-pound piano stool which is as indispensable to Paderewski's playing as the piano itself. Waiting for him in Manhattan was the private Pullman which will be his home during the next three months. Waiting also was his faithful piano-tuner, grey-haired Boston-born Eldon Joubert, who has accompanied him on all his U. S. tours since 1913.

Pianist Paderewski travels in style. But on tour he does worse than live on the wrong side of the tracks : he invariably inhabits freight yards. His private car is outfitted with all the comforts of home, with a library and a piano to practice on.

All his sleeping, eating and practicing while on the road is done in the car, wherever it happens to be parked. The hooting and clatter of passing trains bothers him not a whit.

The car always houses a staff of seven men. Besides Secretary Strakacz, who plays bridge with him on long jumps, and Piano-tuner Joubert, who carries around an atlas and answers questions about the populations and industries of the towns they visit, the most indispensable member of this staff is his private chef. With romantic Paderewski, food is a romantic passion. He is partial to lamb, chicken and turkey, worships caviar, pheasant and sweet champagne. If he is about to visit a town famous for some particular dish, he always telegraphs ahead to have some of it specially prepared for him. On concert days he lunches at 4 p.m., dines at midnight.

His cooks have had long reigns. Greatest of them was the great Copper, who retired in 1927 after cooking Paderewski's meals for 25 years. After a midnight meal in his private car on some Midwestern siding, Paderewski once called the waiter to him. "Tell Mr. Copper," he beamed, "that the meat, the vegetables and the dessert were excellent." The waiter went out, then reappeared. "Mr. Copper said to tell you," he reported, "that the soup was excellent too."

Old Patriot. Like all Poles, Paderewski is a fervent patriot. For him only one thing has been more important than his music: his life-long dream of an independent Poland. When the World War broke, Paderewski saw his big chance to make that dream come true. For the duration of the War he toured England and the U. S., playing, speaking at dinners, lobbying with politicians, devoting all the proceeds of his concerts to Polish relief. At this tea-table politics he was a great success. In 1917, with the help of his close friend, Colonel House, he prevailed upon President Wilson to include an independent Poland in his proposals for European peace. When, at the end of the War, the Allies asked Paderewski to organize a stable Polish government, the pianist took up politics in earnest. In a vote like a crashing chord the Polish Parliament voted their confidence in him as their first Premier. On June 28, 1919, at Versailles, he got Poland back its official place on the map of Europe.

Then Politician Paderewski's troubles began. "Piano playing," he once remarked, "is more difficult than statesmanship." But as a practical Premier, Paderewski was a first-rate pianist. He let correspondence pile up, let the telephone ring itself hoarse. In the rough & tumble of practical politics, he was a pushover for Poland's tough, military Marshal Pilsudski. In December 1919, Paderewski resigned, left Poland and politics to brood alone at his estate in Morges, Switzerland.*

At 59, Paderewski's political adventures had left him weary, disappointed and short of cash. For several years he remained a recluse, remembered by the public only for an occasional smouldering outburst on the state of affairs in his native Poland. He had not touched the piano for four years. Rumors spread that the great Paderewski had forgotten how to play. But in 1922, his red-gold hair now silver, Paderewski staged a comeback, proved that he was still the only living virtuoso who could gross half a million dollars on a U. S. concert tour.

Age had not subdued his mane-shaking mannerisms but had somewhat slowed his brilliant technique. He still flailed the keyboard like a maddened thresher, still followed through a rippling run as though he were plucking a rabbit from a topper. But his stubby fingers, which he always soaked in warm water before a performance, though still steely-supple, had just perceptibly lost something of their cascading fluidity. Critics no longer unconditionally rated him as No. 1 among the world's great pianists. But he still had what it took to hold an audience: a great past, a great presence.

When in 1933 aged Trouper Paderewski walked stiffly up to a piano in Manhattan's Madison Square Garden to play the last concert of his 19th U. S. tour, most of the throng of 20,000 believed they were hearing him for the last time.

Today, Paderewski's once-golden, once-silver mane is grey and thinning at the top. But he still sports the oversized, low, soft collars and droopy ties that he wore in the time of Queen Victoria. Watery-eyed and frail, but still erect as a ramrod, he now walks with the aid of a stick. Still a natty and very individual dresser, he prefers striped trousers and a white vest for daytime wear. Though his manner in conversation is kindly, dignified and somewhat remote (he speaks English without trace of an accent), his eyes can still flash like an aging lion's when Poland is mentioned.

Old & Mild. When he is not traveling, Paderewski lives in his 26-room villa Riond Bosson at Morges, Switzerland. Once the property of Fouche, Napoleon's Minister of Police, Riond Bosson overlooks Lake Geneva towards towering Mont Blanc. Paderewski has at different times bought half-a-dozen farms and country estates, including a large walnut ranch in California. But Riond Bosson has for 40 years been the nearest thing to a permanent home that Paderewski has had. There, with his sister

Antoinina Wilkonska, a woman secretary and her mother, and a dozen servants, he lives the mild life of a well-to-do country gentleman.

Rising promptly at nine in the morning, he first of all reads his daily newspaper from cover to cover. After breakfasting on a roll and tea at 10:30, he retires to practice until 2:15, when lunch is served. His afternoons are spent walking about the grounds, smoking a few specially-made Mignon brand Egyptian cigarets, which he imports from a Manhattan tobacconist, and reading books on history, philosophy and politics. From 5 to 8:30 he plays the piano, then dines and spends the evening in the nightly ritual of a bridge game. At 10:30 he shuffles off to bed.

Paderewski has always regarded himself as a composer, and still spends much of his time composing. Aside from, his famous Minuet, which he wrote while a student in Vienna more than 50 years ago, the musical public has paid little attention to Paderewski's composition. But his Symphony in B Minor and his Polish opera, Manru, have been performed in most of the big musical centres of the world.

Old Booper. Today, Paderewski has long since passed the peak of one of the most spectacular careers in the history of music. But the life of success that he looks back upon in the pastoral elegance of Riond Bosson was won with bitter years of discouragement and struggle. The son of a small-town Polish farm administrator, he felt as a child the knouts of Cossack riding whips, saw his father thrown into prison as a revolutionist against the Tsars. No infant prodigy, he worked until he was nearly 30 before attracting any public notice as a pianist. His early studies at the Warsaw Conservatory met with little encouragement. Only the trombone teacher, with whom he took a few experimental booping lessons, saw a future for him. Said he: "You will earn your livelihood with the trombone, not the piano."

Even the great pedagogue Leschetizky, with whom he later went to study in Vienna, tried to discourage him from becoming a pianist, advised him to stick to composition. But Paderewski had to keep on. At 20 he had fallen in love with a fellow student at the conservatory and married. A year later his young wife had died, leaving him alone in the world with a hopelessly crippled son* to support. For years he roamed Europe teaching in schools and conservatories, earning enough to keep his son cared for and himself alive. He was always sure, in spite of gloomy predictions, that he would one day become a great concert artist.

His big chance came in 1884 when, at a Polish summer resort, he met the great Polish Actress Helena Modjeska. To Modjeska, then the toast of half the theatres of the world, he confided his ambitions. Graciously she suggested a joint concert in Cracow, at which he would play and she would appear in dramatic recitations. The concert was given. Modjeska's name on the billboards acted like magic, and Paderewski was up the first notch in his laborious climb to fame.

Old-Style. Today, somewhat naturally, crotchety, old-worldly Pianist Paderewski looks back with fussy nostalgia to the times of his greatest triumphs. On the present-day world and its modern customs he wastes little affection. For him civilization has been steadily slipping since Victorian days. The only contemporary composer he cares anything about is Germany's Richard Strauss. Musical modernism he abhors. Says he: "Modern music ended with Debussy."

Though he enjoys movies immensely

(especially old Charlie Chaplin films), he looks back upon his film debut in Moonlight Sonata as an intensely uncomfortable experience. "There were too many repetitions and too many lights. I can only play at ease in subdued light." At the radio, over which he has made only two broadcasts, he practically spits: "It is killing music and musicians. I don't believe it [helps to make people more musical than they are]. It just robs them of any possible personal musical activity and of their musical keenness; it casts a spell of laziness on them." (Nevertheless, Critic Paderewski's first public performance on his coming U. S. tour will be a broadcast over the NBC-Blue network.) About jazz he is more tolerant. Says he: "To be frank, I detest it. But it can be used judiciously." Secretary Sylwin Strakacz, a confirmed swing fan, has long tried to get Paderewski interested in boogie-woogie, but the upshot of his efforts has usually been nothing but argument, long and loud.

Paderewski's real enthusiasms are all for the events and customs of the plush-upholstered '80s and '90s, for the theatre of Sarah Bernhardt, the court life of Victorian England, the restaurants of old New York. A recent indication of modern decadence, in Paderewski's eyes, was the fuss-&-feathers about Sir James Jeans's statement that there is no such thing as "touch" in piano playing -- that a pianist will get the same tone whether he hits the key with his finger or the end of an umbrella. Says umbrella-thatched Paderewski: "Art is a question of personality. What kind of personality has an umbrella?"

*Last week Exile Paderewski, worried over Germany's war threats, offered to return to Poland to organize Polish defenses. Warsaw was cold to the suggestion.

*At 20 his son died. Paderewski had married again, in 1899, Helena Gorska. She died in Switzerland in 1934.

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