IGNACY JAN PADEREWSKI (KURILIVKA, UKRAINE 6 NOVEMBER 1860
– NEW YORK CITY, U.S. 29 JUNE 1941)
Paderewski was the son of a steward of a Polish landowner. He studied
music from 1872 at the Warsaw Conservatory and from 1878 taught piano there,
and in 1880 he married one of his pupils, Antonina Korsak, who died in
childbirth the following year. Encouraged and financed by the actress Helena
Modrzejewska (Modjeska), he studied in Vienna from 1884 to 1887 under Theodor
Leschetizky, who did much to improve a limited technique. During this period he
also taught at the Strasbourg Conservatory. Between 1887 and 1891 he made his
first public appearances as a pianist, in Vienna, Paris, London, and New York
City. His success with the public was overwhelming; his personality on the
concert platform, like that of Liszt, his predecessor among piano virtuosos,
generated a mystical devotion. Among his colleagues, however, he was more
envied than respected. Chopin (whose works he edited), Bach, Beethoven, and
Schumann were the chief composers of his repertory. In 1898 he settled at Riond
Bosson near Morges in Switzerland, and the following year he married Helena Gorska,
Baroness von Rosen. In 1901 his opera Manru, dealing with life in the Tatra
Mountains, was given at Dresden. In 1909 his Symphony in B Minor was given at
Boston, and in that same year he became director of the Warsaw Conservatory.
Throughout his life Paderewski was a staunch patriot. In 1910 he presented to
the city of Kraków a monument commemorating the 500th anniversary of the
victory of the Poles over the Teutonic Order. During World War I he became a
member of the Polish National Committee and was appointed its representative to
the United States, where he urged Pres. Woodrow Wilson to support the cause of
Polish independence. Wilson included Poland’s cause as the 13th of his Fourteen
Points of Jan. 8, 1918. After the war the provisional head of state, Józef
Piłsudski, asked Paderewski to form in Warsaw a government of experts free from
party tendencies. This was formed on Jan. 17, 1919. Paderewski reserved the
portfolio of foreign affairs for himself, but his premiership was not a
success. As a virtuoso, Paderewski was accustomed to flattery, and he resented
sharp criticism. On Nov. 27, 1919, he resigned the premiership and returned to
Riond Bosson; his ambitions to become the president of the revived Poland had
been shattered. He never revisited the country. In 1921 he resumed his musical
career, giving concerts in Europe and the United States, mainly for war
victims. At the beginning of World War II, in October 1939, a Polish
government-in-exile, formed in Paris with Gen. Władysław Sikorski as prime
minister, offered Paderewski the chairmanship of the Polish National Council.
After the French capitulation in 1940, he went to the United States. He died
soon after and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
TRACKLIST
1. 1246 WELTE-MIGNON BEETHOVEN – Piano Sonata, Op. 27, No. 2,
c#”Moonlight” 1 mvt.
2. 1246 WELTE-MIGNON BEETHOVEN – Piano Sonata, Op. 27, No. 2,
c#”Moonlight” 2 mvt.
3. 1247 WELTE-MIGNON BEETHOVEN – Piano Sonata, Op. 27, No. 2, c#
“Moonlight” 3rd mvt.
4. 1248 WELTE-MIGNON SCHUBERT – Impromptu, Op. 142, No. 3, Bb
“Rosamunde”
5. 1249 WELTE-MIGNON CHOPIN – Ballade No. 3, Ab, Op. 47
6. 1251 WELTE-MIGNON CHOPIN – Mazurka, Op. 24, No. 4, b-b
7. 1253 WELTE-MIGNON CHOPIN – Etude, Op. 25, No. 9, Gb “Butterfly”
8. 1254 WELTE-MIGNON CHOPIN – Etude, Op. 10, No. 3, E “Tristesse”
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