Word: paderewskis
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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...
...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...
...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...
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...
...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...