Word: paderewskis
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...tradition goes back to Chester A. Arthur, who called on Operatic Soprano Adelina Patti. Teddy Roosevelt gave weekly musicales for as many as 500 guests, invited such performers as Paderewski and Actress Ethel Barrymore. Neither Herbert Hoover nor Calvin Coolidge went in for such lighthearted entertainment, although Coolidge once had John Barrymore to dinner before going to the National to see the Great Profile play Hamlet. Both F.D.R. (he liked Lawrence Tibbett, Marian Anderson, Kate Smith and Mickey Mouse, among others) and Truman were major White House impresarios...
...return to Poland, his concerts became immediate sellouts; 1,200 people turned up merely to hear him rehearse. Before he played a note at his final concert, the audience stood as he walked on the stage (the only other musician in modern memory similarly honored in Warsaw: Pianist Ignace Paderewski, who later became Prime Minister...
...father was teaching. Later, Russian-born Leopold Godowsky*-one of the world's top pianists as well as a talented composer-became imperial royal professor of music to Austria's Emperor Franz Joseph. Recalls Dagmar: "It was not unusual to come home [from school] and find Paderewski. Chaliapin, Kreisler, Hofmann, Caruso, Elman, Damrosch" or such writers as "Jakob Wassermann, Gerhart Hauptmann. Hermann Sudermann. Thomas Mann, every mann...
...people regard "politicians" as "a pretty dirty word," Truman responded, "A politician is a man who understands government, and it's the most honorable profession in the world." Inevitably the group came to another piano, a replica of the one in the White House. Truman tinkled out the Paderewski minuet and, for an encore, bravely riddled a Mozart theme with clinkers. Then, after a closing speech ("Learn all you can about the Government so you can continue this great republic of ours"), the Missouri Waltz welled up and Truman scurried downstairs to the basement control room...
While visiting the Beethoven shrine, the great Paderewski on being asked to play the Moonlight Sonata on Beethoven's piano, modestly replied: "I am not worthy to touch it." But "Give 'em Hell" Harry sat right down and played a sonata of Mozart's on Mozart's own piano, right in front of Mozart's portrait. I can imagine the irascible ghost of Wagner muttering "Squirrelhead...