Home > Baker's Student Encyclopedia of Music > Paderewski, Ignacy

(Jan), celebrated Polish pianist and composer; b. Kurylowka, Podolia (Russian Poland), Nov. 18, 1860; d. N.Y., June 29, 1941. Paderewski's father was an administrator of country estates, and his mother died soon after his birth. From early childhood, Paderewski was attracted to piano music. He received some instruction from pianist Peter Sowinski, who taught him four-hand arrangements of operas.

Paderewski's first public appearance was in a charity concert at 11, when he played piano with his sister. His playing aroused interest among wealthy patrons, who took him to Kiev. He was then sent to Warsaw, where he entered the Conservatory, learned to play trombone, and joined the school band. He also continued serious piano study.

In 1875 and 1877 Paderewski toured in provincial Russian towns with a Polish violinist. In the interim periods he took courses in composition at the Warsaw Conservatory, and upon graduation in 1878 he was engaged as a member of its piano faculty. In 1880 he married a young music student named Antonina Korsak, but she died nine days after giving birth to their child later that year.

In 1882 Paderewski went to Berlin to study composition with Friedrich Kiel. There he met ANTON RUBINSTEIN, who gave him encouraging advice and urged him to compose piano music. He resigned from his teaching job at the Warsaw Conservatory and began to study orchestration in Berlin with Heinrich Urban.

While on vacation in the Tatra Mountains (which inspired his Tatra Album for piano), Paderewski met the celebrated Polish actress Modjeska, who offered to finance his further piano studies with Theodor Leschetizky in Vienna. After several years as Leschetizky's student, he continued his career as a concert pianist. In 1888 he gave his first Paris recital. Later that year, he played a concert in Vienna. He also began receiving recognition as a composer. Anna Essipoff (Leschetizky's wife) played his piano concerto in Vienna under the direction of HANS RICHTER. Paderewski made his London debut in 1890.

In 1891 Paderewski played for the first time in N.Y. and was greeted with an adulation rare for pianists. By some accounts he gave 107 concerts in 117 days in N.Y. and other American cities and attended 86 dinner parties. His wit, already fully developed, made him a social lion in wealthy American salons.

American ladies beseeched him for a lock of his luxurious mane of hair. He invariably obliged, and when his valet observed that at this rate he would soon be bald, he said, "Not I, my dog." There is even a story related by a gullible biographer that Paderewski could charm beasts by his art and that a spider used to come down from the ceiling in Paderewski's lodgings in Vienna and sit at the piano every time Paderewski played a certain étude by FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN. Paderewski eclipsed even opera star ENRICO CARUSO as an idol of the masses.

In 1890 Paderewski made a concert tour in Germany. He also toured South America, South Africa, and Australia. In 1898 he purchased a beautiful home, the Villa Riond-Bosson, on Lake Geneva, Switzerland. In 1899 he married Helena Gorska, the Baroness von Rosen. In 1900, by a deed of trust, Paderewski established a fund of $10,000, the interest from which was to be used for triennial prizes given "to composers of American birth without distinction as to age or religion" for works in the following categories: symphonies, concertos, and chamber music.

In 1910, on the occasion of the centennial of Chopin's birth, Paderewski donated $60,000 for the construction of the Chopin Memorial Hall in Warsaw. In the same year he contributed $100,000 for the erection of the statue of King Jagiello in Warsaw, on the quinquecentennial of his victory over the Teutonic Knights in 1410. In 1913 he purchased a ranch in Paso Robles, California.

Although cosmopolitan in his culture, Paderewski remained a great Polish patriot. During World War I he donated the entire proceeds from his concerts to a fund for the Polish people caught in the war between Russia and Germany. After the establishment of the independent Polish state, Paderewski served as its representative in Washington,D.C. In 1919 he was named prime minister of the Polish Republic, the first musician to occupy such a post in any country at any period. He took part in the Versailles Treaty conference.

Paderewski resigned his post in late 1919 but reentered politics in 1920 in the wake of the Russian invasion of Poland that year, when he became a delegate to the League of Nations. He resigned in 1921 and resumed his musical career. In 1922 he gave his first concert after a hiatus of many years at CARNEGIE HALL in N.Y.

In 1939 Paderewski made his last American tour. Once more during his lifetime Poland was invaded, this time by both Germany and Russia, and once more Paderewski was driven to political action. He joined the Polish government-in-exile in France and was named president of its parliament in early 1940. He returned to the U.S. later that year, a few months before his death. At the order of President Roosevelt, his body was given state burial in Arlington National Cemetery, pending the return of his remains to a free Poland.

As an artist Paderewski was a faithful follower of the ROMANTIC school, which allowed free, almost improvisatory changes from the written notes, tempos, and dynamics. Judged by 20th-century standards of precise rendering of the text, Paderewski's interpretations appear surprisingly unrestrained, but this very personal freedom of performance moved contemporary audiences to ecstasies of admiration. Although his virtuoso technique, which astonished his listeners, has been easily matched by any number of pianists of succeeding generations, his position in the world of the performing arts remains undiminished.

As a composer Paderewski also belongs to the ROMANTIC school. At least one of his piano pieces, the Menuet in G (a movement of his set of Six Humoresques for piano), achieved enormous popularity. His other compositions, however, never sustained interest and were eventually relegated to the archives of unperformed music. His opera MANRU (1897-1900), dealing with folk life in the Tatra Mountains, was produced in Dresden in 1901 and, a year later, by the Metropolitan Opera in N.Y. Another major work, the B-minor Symphony, was first performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1909.

Paderewski's other works included the Piano Concerto in A minor (1888), Fantaisie polonaise for piano and orchestra (1893), Violin Sonata (1880), songs, and solo piano works.