A NEW WORLD TO CONQUER
[Illustration: Coat of arms with Eagle.]
Carnegie Hall in New York City has been the goal of musicians from all
over the world for nearly three quarters of a century. But on November
17, 1891, when the new European artist first played there for an
audience that had paid a total of only $500 to hear him, the famous hall
was barely six months old.
Paderewski was still slightly numb from his first impressions of the
world he had come to conquer! After a long, rough crossing, his ship had
docked late on a rainy night. In those days the first view of New York
from the harbor was by no means the thrilling sight it is today. The
famous skyline did not yet exist and the unlit waterfront consisted of a
few dirty, low-lying buildings.
Almost as depressing as the scenery was Mr. Charles F. Tretbar, the
Steinway representative who met him at the dock with this cheering
welcome: "Well, Mr. Paderewski, we hear you have had a brilliant success
in London and Paris. But let me tell you, you need not expect anything
like that here in America. We have heard them all, all the pianists, all
the great ones, and our demands are very exacting. We are not easily
pleased here! Besides, everyone knows that piano playing is not as well
rewarded as singing or violin playing, so don't expect any extraordinary
audiences. I've done my best for you, but it won't amount to much!"
Paderewski, his secretary, and his luggage, were then deposited at a
dismal hotel in Union Square where the two men spent the night routing
battalions of mice and bedbugs. Although they were moved to a good hotel
the next day, with the profound apologies of Mr. Steinway himself, the
lost night had not helped to put Paderewski in a festive mood for his
first concert. Nor had his first look at the schedule of his tour
arranged by Mr. Tretbar. To his dismay, he found that he was advertised
for six solo recitals and three concerts with orchestra during the first
two weeks. Each orchestral concert included two concertos. He would be
playing six different concertos within six days.
Paderewski was learning the hard way about the energetic all-out
American way of doing things! In Europe, a pianist who played six
different concertos in one season, much less one week, would be
considered a wonder. Four of the concertos he could easily manage, but
the other two, although he had played them once or twice, were not
really ready for public performance.
All of these troublesome facts, however, he put out of his mind when he
walked out onto the stage of Carnegie Hall for the first time and began
to play the Saint-Saens C minor Concerto. It was the same work he had
played with the Lamoureux Orchestra in Paris. This time he was
accompanied by the Symphony Society of New York City, under its handsome
young conductor, Walter Damrosch. The evening closed with his own
concerto, which gave the New York critics a chance to judge him as a
composer as well as a pianist.
But poor Paderewski had little time after the concert that night to
worry about the next day's reviews. Damrosch had scheduled the rehearsal
for the next concert at ten o'clock in the morning. And at this second
concert he was to play not only the Beethoven "Emperor" Concerto and the
Schumann Concerto, but, as a bonus for the audience, the fiendishly
difficult Hungarian Fantasia for piano and orchestra by Liszt.
Paderewski went back to his new hotel physically exhausted, as always
after a concert, and began practicing for the next day's work. He had
not struck more than six chords before there was an agitated knocking at
the door. The manager of the hotel stood outside, wringing his hands.
"Mr. Paderewski! Playing the piano at this hour?"
"But I have to practice for my next concert. And nighttime is the only
time I have free!"
"Yes, but Mr. Paderewski, we have so many elderly people living in the
hotel. We can't possibly have you practicing the piano at midnight. You
can understand that!"
He could understand it, yes, but what could he do about it? Suddenly
from the depth of his memory came a clear picture of the Kerntopf
factory in Warsaw, with its room after room of inviting pianos. He
grabbed his coat and called to his secretary, "Goerlitz! Come on! We're
going out!"
"Going out? At this hour? Where to?"
"To the Steinway warehouse!"
The nightwatchman at the Fourteenth Street office was surprised to be
roused from his slumbers by a wild-eyed man pounding at the door. "I
must have presented a strange appearance," Paderewski recalled. "The
watchman, however, opened the room where the pianos were stored, and
there, in that cold and gloomy loft, I began practicing. There were no
lights except the two candles on the piano. It must have been a strange
sight as I think back on it--the empty room, with two fluttering candles
and the two men, the night watchman and my secretary, each snoring
loudly in his corner as I worked on until morning. That was all I had
for inspiration!"
Yet in spite of his fatigue, this concert was a greater success than the
first one. The reviews of the debut had been of the sort usually
described as "mixed." But after the second concert the _New York Times_
headlined its account with the flat statement, "The Success of Ignace
Jan Paderewski is Assured."
His success might be assured, but poor Ignace Jan Paderewski himself was
in sad shape as he doggedly returned to the Steinway warehouse to
practice the arm-wrenching Rubinstein Concerto. How long, he wondered,
could he go on at his present pace? No wonder Rubinstein himself had
made only one American tour in his life and had said, when begged to
return, "May Heaven preserve us from such slavery!"
The third concert, a matinee for which he had practiced a total of
seventeen hours, was an unqualified triumph, "the real beginning of my
career in America." It was not only the critics who were ecstatic. So
was Mr. Tretbar. Three thousand dollars, an unheard-of amount of money
for a single concert, was taken in at the box office. By the end of the
season, Paderewski's appearance in the same hall would bring in nearly
twice that amount.
Mr. Steinway himself, although pleased by the box office receipts, did
not really care whether he made money out of these concerts. The
Steinway firm had thought of the Paderewski tour as a means of
advertising its pianos. And what an inspiration the idea turned out to
be! In the mind of the public the name "Steinway" became inextricably
linked with the name "Paderewski," and the latter was about to move into
the household-word category.
Successful as it undoubtedly was, the first American season was full of
trials--some small, one a near tragedy. Mr. Tretbar (who, it should be
recorded, later became Paderewski's staunch friend and ally) had indeed
had little faith in the success of just one more piano player from
Europe. To Paderewski's great annoyance he found that his six solo
recitals to be given the week after the three orchestral concerts would
not be played in Carnegie Hall, but in a small recital room in Madison
Square Garden.
"But why?" he asked. "Why? I've just filled Carnegie Hall for you! Why
should I play my recitals in a small place?"
Mr. Tretbar shrugged. A solo piano recital would never fill Carnegie
Hall, he said. Besides, it was in the contract that Mr. Paderewski would
play where and when he was told to play, and he was being told to play
in the small hall of Madison Square Garden!
He played three out of six recitals there. When hundreds of would-be
ticket-buyers were turned away, disappointed, from the third one, Mr.
Tretbar had nothing whatever to say. Mr. Steinway himself ordered the
last three recitals moved to Carnegie Hall.
Paderewski's brilliant concerts shed a special lustre over the new hall
which until then had simply been one of several possible places to
appear in New York City. But soon a new artist's appearance in Carnegie
Hall came to be regarded as the real sign that he had "arrived." It was
Paderewski's successes there that established the trend more than any
other single factor.
Paderewski left New York with the audiences and critics alike solidly
behind him. His New York success was repeated all over the country.
Although he was naturally delighted to play before packed houses, the
economic aspects of the tour were more and more irritating. He was being
paid an average of $375 for each appearance, yet the box office income
was running upwards of $3,000! Far more serious was the frightening
problem that soon began to plague him. As the strenuous weeks wore on,
as solo recitals and orchestral concerts piled up, the strain of playing
so often in public began to produce a violent physical reaction in his
right arm. Before long he found himself playing in almost constant pain.
The actual physical basis of his trouble lay in the action of the
Steinway pianos of that day. As Paderewski said, they were "universally
recognized as the most marvelous instruments in the world." But they had
an action that he found extremely heavy and tiring. It simply took too
much pressure to move the keys. After much arguing back and forth he
finally persuaded the factory to regulate the action of the seven pianos
he was using for the tour.
The relief was immense and the discomfort in his arm, although still
present, became bearable. Then one dreadful night in Rochester, as he
was playing the opening chords of his recital, he felt an excruciating
pain tear through his right arm. (Afterwards, when it was too late, he
found out what had happened. The piano used in the Rochester concert had
just come back from the factory, where a new and unbriefed workman had
carefully changed the action back to its original stiffness.) Yet
Paderewski stayed on the platform to play the Beethoven "Appassionata"
Sonata, one of the most taxing works in the repertoire. He finished the
program in a state of near collapse, then rushed off to find a doctor,
and to hear the terrifying truth. He had torn some tendons in his right
arm and could no longer move his fourth finger. The doctor said, "The
situation is very grave, and there is nothing that I can do for you.
Nothing but time will help. You must rest." This was easy advice to
give, but how does a pianist rest when he has concerts ahead of him for
which tickets have been sold? Paderewski did it by rearranging the
fingering in every piece of music on his programs so that he could play
with only four of the fingers on his right hand. This is like asking a
baseball pitcher to fire a curve ball without using his thumb!
It was not the first time that Paderewski had demonstrated the peculiar
iron of his constitution. It was certainly not the last.
At the end of the tour he returned to New York exhausted and
discouraged, but relieved that the gruelling months were over. He was
met by news that both pleased and horrified him. Mr. Steinway, all
smiles, announced that various cities not included in the tour were
besieging the office with requests for Paderewski! "Now Paderewski," he
said expansively, "you are going to give those extra concerts and we
will pay all expenses--everything. Every cent that is taken in will be
clear gain for you. That will be our small contribution to reward you
for what was, I am sorry to say, badly managed at the beginning of your
tour."
Generosity of spirit was a factor that meant a great deal to Paderewski,
but although Mr. Steinway's thoughtfulness touched him, he was aghast at
the thought of playing more concerts. He was also struck by the sobering
thought that since his career had probably been wrecked forever by this
tour, he might as well make the most of it. He gave the concerts and
made more from the extra ones than he had made out of all the others put
together.
Paderewski's bleak conviction that the American tour might be his last
happily proved to be mistaken. Actually it was only the first of twenty
triumphant tours during which he would play more than fifteen hundred
concerts for more than five million people. Only one other person has
ever equaled his success at the box office--the beloved soprano, Amelita
Galli-Curci. The two artists still stand supreme as the greatest
money-makers in the musical history of America.
During those American tours, Paderewski did much more than make music
and money. He also made friends in high places--firm, devoted friends
who respected him for his great spirit as well as for his fleet fingers.
And he captured the imagination and affection of the American public as
no other artist has ever done.
How to describe Paderewski's electrifying effect on the public! Many
people have tried. Arthur Loesser, in his fascinating book, MEN, WOMEN
AND PIANOS, does it as well as anyone. He says: "The most flaming
pianistic glory in America's history broke out when the Steinways first
put forth Ignace Paderewski in the autumn of 1891. He was indeed a
performer of very high ability, an artist of unusual expressive power;
yet that was only one element of his peculiar appeal. His total
personality was just what, in the American idea, a concert pianist's
ought to be, if one were to marvel at him and respect him at the same
time. His chrysanthemum of pale red hair, the feminine dreaminess and
brooding of his looks coupled with his aggressive, solid
muscularity--all this was strange and might have seemed ridiculous to
Philistines. But the reserve of his bearing, the hypnotic deliberateness
and lordly courtesy of his movements, were the signs of a profound inner
dignity before which a measure of awe could not fail to be felt. He
seemed, verily, the prince of a foreign realm. No pianist has ever
captured the American imagination as he did, keeping his hold over it
for thirty years. He became a legend: his mispronounced name drew
farmers from their barns, schoolboys from their baseball, real estate
speculators from their offices--all manner of unlikely persons from
their dens--into a concert hall to have a look and a listen at him."
The day would come when Paderewski's hold over the affection of the
American public would mean more to him--and to his country--than he
could even begin to imagine as he sailed back to Europe at the end of
his first visit to America.