Headpiece, PADEREWSKI AT HOMEPADEREWSKI AT HOMEBY ABBIE H. C. FINCKWITH A PORTRAIT BY EMIL FUCHS
Headpiece, PADEREWSKI AT HOME
BY ABBIE H. C. FINCK
WITH A PORTRAIT BY EMIL FUCHS
RIOND-BOSSON, Paderewski’s beautiful place at Morges, on the Swiss side of Lake Geneva, has become one of the show-places of Europe not only on account of its famous owner, but also for its orchards, greenhouses, and the chicken farm, which is one of Mme. Paderewska’s chief cares. Better still, it is a charming home, where the world’s greatest pianist and his wife spend the happiest part of their lives, the time when he is free to compose, to practise, and to surround himself with friends, to whom in gracious hospitality both manage to devote much time. Neither appears officially before luncheon; but Mme. Paderewska, shaded by a sunbonnet, accompanied by several dogs, and followed by a retinue of workmen, is one of the frequent morning sights about the premises. She oversees everything, the house,—notably the kitchen, in which both she and Paderewski are greatly interested,—the chickens, and the growing of the fruit and vegetables. Besides this, she attends to her husband’s enormous correspondence, and is always ready with help and advice to smooth difficulties out of his way.
The Paderewskis are very fond of animals, especially dogs and parrots. The wild birds, too, receive Mme. Paderewska’s care, and by her special orders birdhouses have been placed on every tree on the place. She has her reward, for the air is filled with the melody of their songs. With all the other demands on her time, she finds leisure for collecting material for a cook-book, which promises to be a valuable work, many of its recipes being the result of her personal experience.
Paderewski spends most of the morning and afternoon hours in his own study. He finds some time for exercise during the day, grass-cutting on lawn and fields being his favorite outdoor work; and although his priceless hands have to be protected by gloves, he gets a good deal of fun as well as benefit from being a “farm-hand.” At luncheon-time he appears, after a hard morning’s work, looking well, happy, and boyish, dressed, like Mark Twain, in pure white, and ready to chat delightfully on any subject, whether it be gastronomy, American politics, his own interesting South-American experiences, or other topics.
Paderewski’s love of the picturesque made him long to own one of the splendid old châteaux that abound in that part of Switzerland; but the more practical counsels of his wife prevailed, and their home is simply a comfortable modern house, standing at the top of a large, sloping, green field. It is built somewhat in the chalet type, of red brick, with many balconies, and a stately front terrace, and it commands a magnificent prospect, first of the rose-garden, then of the wide sweep of green, bordered by huge trees—lindens, chestnuts, and evergreens. Farther on is the lake, with a splendid view of Mont Blanc for a background. Flowers abound: orange-trees in tubs, geraniums, heliotrope, mignonette, and chiefly roses, which not only fill the formal rose-garden, but scramble over the fences of the chicken-yards, a mass of pink-and-red bloom; while in the orchard, between the espalier-grown fruit-trees, there is almost an equal number of tall rose-bushes, all in bloom in July.
Half-tone plate engraved for THECENTURYby H. DavidsonIGNACE PADEREWSKIFROM A CHARCOAL SKETCH BY EMIL FUCHS⇒LARGER IMAGE
Half-tone plate engraved for THECENTURYby H. Davidson
IGNACE PADEREWSKI
FROM A CHARCOAL SKETCH BY EMIL FUCHS
⇒LARGER IMAGE
There are many portraits of Paderewski at Riond-Bosson, but none except the pencil-sketch by Burne-Jones has represented both the strength and the spirituality of his head. This portrait hangs in the salon, surrounded by old prints, which are one of the master’s hobbies. Fragonard’s pictures are evidently among his favorites, as they also occupy a place of honor in the drawing-room. Autographed engravings by Alma-Tadema, caricatures of Paderewski by well-known artists, and photographs of famous friends—Modjeska, Saint-Saëns, and Sembrich, among others—adorn the house from top to bottom; and Paderewski is the possessor of a remarkable collection of old Swiss prints of towns and scenery. A few very interesting family photographs hang in the library, a whole group being of Mme. Paderewska in her childhood and girlhood, a maiden with beautiful dreamy eyes and a delicate face, framed in dusky hair.
There are seven pianos in the house, two being in the drawing-room; but it is in his own study that Paderewski does all his practising and composing. His practising would be both an encouragement and a discouragement to students. Hour after hour he works, with the patience that none but the greatest possess, polishing and repolishing phrases that sound perfect even to a practised ear, but which do not satisfy his critical judgment. Only occasionally does he allow himself the relaxation of playing even a page of music; after this he returns relentlessly to octave work, to staccato finger-passages, to separate phrases from Liszt’s sonatas, to the more difficult portions of his own magnificent “Variations et fugue,” to snatches of Chopin, or to bits of Debussy, whose piano-music he likes.
Paderewski has much admiration for the greatest masters of the French school: Gounod, Bizet, and especially Saint-Saëns, whom he considers the greatest living musician. With enthusiasm he tells of Saint-Saëns’s achievement in playing four Mozart concertos from memory at the age of seventy-six. He also admires Massenet, particularly his “Jongleur,” which he calls the French composer’s masterpiece. He feels that Gounod’s “Faust,” even more than his “Roméo et Juliette,” is immortal, and that “Carmen” is one of the works which can never grow old, and of which one cannot tire. He finds Gounod’s influence in Bizet’s compositions, and still more in those of Tschaikovsky, who in all his work was dominated by the great Frenchman, the “Faust” waltz even having colored Tschaikovsky’s symphonic ideas, coming into them either in conventional waltz time or in the unusual rhythm of five beats, as in the second movement of the “Symphonie Pathétique.” Still more pronounced is Tschaikovsky’s debt to Gounod in “Eugen Onegin,” where, in the love-scene, this same waltz phrase appears reversed, though almost identical with that in “Faust.” “But I prefer the father,” Paderewski adds. To him, as to many other lovers of “Faust,” the “Soldiers’ Chorus” is uninteresting; but he singles out for special admirationMefisto’sstriking song of the “Veau d’or,” his serenade, and the “immortally beautiful” love-music.
Acquaintance with Tschaikovsky’s music means knowing the whole Russian school, Paderewski says, although the younger Russian musicians repudiate him and Rubinstein, just as Russian writers turn against their greatest representative, and call Turgenieff a foreigner, expatriated, and untrue to Russian characteristics. The first and last movements of Tschaikovsky’s best-loved symphony, the “Pathétique,” Paderewski considers sublime; but he regards the other two as rather commonplace.
His opinion of the modern French school has not changed since his talk with Mr. Daniel Gregory Mason, which was published in THECENTURYfor November, 1908. Some of the Debussy piano-music appeals to him; but he still considers “Pelléas” little more than color, and rather monotonous color.
“I think I must be very old-fashioned,” he once said, “for I know many persons no younger than I who like it.” His own “Variations,” in which some listeners found a surface resemblance to the modern French school, have no more real relation to it than has the music of Chopin or of Liszt.
Paderewski is as great in gastronomy as in music, and he believes the subject of food is “the most important question” in our country. Of Americans he says: “They are rich—rich enough to spoil French cooking,” meaning their frequentindifference to quality, a fact which he deeply deplores; for in this art, to him as to other connoisseurs, the French are supreme. “You have good fruits, good meats, but nothing else is good except the scallops, which are the best thing you have. The fish is abominable.” In saying this he probably had in mind the cold-storage fish served in our hotels. “You have destroyed your lobsters, your salmon, your terrapin, your forests. You never think that another generation is coming.”
America is not the only country he censures thus sharply. The English are still more blameworthy, for their food-stuffs are perfection, and yet nothing tastes good; though he admitted that one could get excellent dinners in some London restaurants and private houses.
The sour cherry, which Europe owes to Lucullus, is Paderewski’s favorite fruit. Following the Roman’s example, he has imported the choicest varieties for his Swiss home. These trees came from Poland, and those who ate of the fruit agreed with Paderewski’s statement that they are “the aristocrats among cherries.”
Perhaps the most vital subject to the great Pole is his own beloved country. He is considered an important factor in the Polish-European politics of the day. Considerable apprehension was felt as to the possible effect of his speech on his inflammable compatriots at the Chopin centenary, in 1910, and at the presentation of the magnificent monument which Paderewski had caused to be erected at Cracow in commemoration of the Polish victory over the order of Teutonic Knights at Grunewald, in 1410. One of his countrymen was the sculptor of the splendid equestrian statue of Wladislaus II. The mere description of the scenes that followed, of the acclamations of the Poles, the cheers of thousands for their beloved Paderewski, moves the hearer deeply; what it must have meant to the man in whose honor those thousands gathered from all Poland—a man ready to give his heart’s blood for his country—can be known only to himself and to his wife. Among the interesting souvenirs of this occasion are autographs of many distinguished Poles who gathered to do honor to Poland and to Paderewski. It is hardly strange that the Powers that hold Poland should have felt that very serious consequences might arise from this one man’s magnetism, enthusiasm, and patriotism.
In the speech he made at the Chopin centenary, he advanced an interesting theory to explain the genius of his country and the unrest and moodiness of the Poles. He believes that, as a nation, they are like their music, and live in a perpetual state oftempo rubato, caused by a physical defect—arrhythmia, or unevenness of heartbeat. He was not in the best of health; and being unable to play at this festival, he offered that honor to his American pupil and friend Ernest Schelling, who passed through the ordeal triumphantly, satisfying not only his Polish audience, but his sponsor by his interpretation of the works of Poland’s idol, Chopin.
Paderewski is not addicted to talking much about himself; but occasionally he gives his friends a glimpse of the real man. One autobiographic incident concerns his own playing. Berlin has always been unjust to Paderewski, not for artistic reasons, but on political grounds. One well-known critic, after hearing Paderewski play, went to the artist’s room, his eyes filled with tears of joy, to congratulate the master; but later, obeying the officialmot d’ordrewhich is frequently used in the attempt to kill great artists, he wrote most disagreeably about Paderewski, who, in relating the experience, added half deprecatingly: “He spoiled me by his call. It is easy to be spoiled; and he was so pleased the first time that I thought he would come again.”
The remarkable songs to the poems of Catulle Mendès, which Paderewski published a few years ago, were written, he told us, in three weeks; and in that year, produced in an incredibly short space of time, the piano sonata and the sketch of the symphony also saw the light. The scoring of the latter he could not finish until three years later. The composer is very particular about his manuscript, and if he makes an error, he rewrites the whole page. At times he could score only one page; at others, as many as five; and he smilingly says, “I was so proud of my five pages, even if they were all rests.” He himself has to study the piano accompaniments to his later songs, and he says that “it is foolish to make them so difficult.”
His South-American experiences had been of great interest to him both from thepoint of view of the artist and that of the observer. He had played ten times in Buenos Aires to growing houses and increasing enthusiasm, the last of the series being to a $12,000 audience; he had tasted barbecued beef at a great plantation feast, and found it very unpalatable; he had studied the agricultural conditions of the South-American countries, and had been amazed at the natural wealth of the Argentine Republic, at its forests of trees unknown to us, and still more at its humus, forty meters deep, which makes a soil so fertile that it will last for centuries with no enriching. Being a practical farmer himself, and deeply interested in the good of his own land and forests, every detail of this extraordinary wealth fascinated the great pianist.
Like many other famous artists of to-day, Paderewski finds the making of records for a phonograph far more trying and fatiguing than playing in public. He says he would “rather play at twenty concerts than once for a phonograph.” One of these records was so difficult to make, and needed so many repetitions to insure perfection in every note, not only artistically, but acoustically, that he almost dislikes to hear it. It is safe to predict that his admirers will not share this feeling, and that his own “Cracovienne,” Mendelssohn’s “Hunting-Song,” and Liszt’s “Campanella,” to mention only three, will become popular additions to their collections of records. He has a large number of Oriental records, in which he is greatly interested. Years ago, when he first went to San Francisco, he spent much of his spare time at the Chinese theater listening to their music; so the study of Oriental tunes is no new thing, although, thanks to the recording machines, it has taken a new form.
Never shall we forget our last afternoon at Riond-Bosson, when Paderewski played for us, giving almost a professional recital, at which the greatest of all the music he played was his own “Variations et fugue,” Opus 23. To hear them in the concert-hall, as New York audiences have heard them, is a great experience; but to hear them in a room, with three or four enthusiasts as the only listeners, is a much greater one. Mme. Wilkonska, Paderewski’s sister; Miss Mickiewicz, granddaughter of the famous Polish poet; Mr. Blake, a young Polish sculptor, and we two, were the only persons there besides the pianist and his wife. She stood at his side to turn the leaves for him, although he hardly glanced at the printed page; but as he had not played this composition in a long time, and had had only a few hours’ practice to recall it to memory and fingers, he preferred to have the music before him. Lovers of music will recall the majestic theme in octaves upon which Paderewski has built one of the most splendid sets of variations in all music, one worthy to be compared with Schubert’s sublime variations on his song of “Death and the Maiden.” He had thundered out his theme, when two of Mme. Paderewska’s dogs began a mad romp through the room. Paderewski’s hands dropped from the keys, and the culprits were summarily put out, little realizing their sins. They reappeared at doors and windows, scratching and barking; but, once fairly launched, Paderewski was undisturbed by their small noises, and played on to the end. After finishing the fugue, he replied, in answer to questions, that one of the variations was difficult, then mentioned another, and ended by repeating several of the best variations and also the splendid fugue.
We had been privileged to enjoy an experience such as Liszt described in his book on Chopin, when the other great Polish composer-pianist let his friends hear his own works interpreted by himself; but at Riond-Bosson there was no jarring note of Philistinism such as Liszt found in the aristocratic salons in which Chopin played.