Paderewski by Adam Zamoyski
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Overview: Hailed as a genius and national hero, compared to Einstein and Gandhi, Paderewski rose from provincial obscurity to become the most famous pianist in history — the twentieth century’s first superstar — as well as Prime Minister of Poland.
For more than fifty years, until his death in 1941, he was a household name, and all over the world ‘Paddymania’ was rife.
Audiences swooned: at least a dozen ladies had to be ‘carried out in a fainting condition’ when he performed in Edinburgh in 1894; he was mobbed in Paris, London and all over America, besieged with love letters and proposals of marriage.
Critics eulogized him. James Huneker found his playing ‘totally overwhelming’, and even George Bernard Shaw admitted that Paderewski’s musical ‘intelligence’ permitted him to seize ten nuances in a composition for every one the average pianist picked out.
Advertisers swore by him. The press explored every minute detail of his life. Heads of state received him — he played for Queen Victoria at Windsor, and for Woodrow Wilson at the White House; he was admired by politicians from Lloyd George to Mussolini, by artists from Conrad to Burne-Jones and Saint-Saëns.
Why then, after his death, did Paderewski come to be largely forgotten?
Adam Zamoyski sets out not only to reassess Paderewski’s achievements, but to revive, with the help of new research, the astonishing story of his life.
It is a story with elements of both a fairy tale and a melodrama, in which, despite the trials of his early life, his chaotic musical education, his tragic first marriage, and the initial hostility of audiences and critics, Paderewski’s fanatical ambition to ‘do something for Poland’ drove him to unprecedented success.
Drawing on a wide range of contemporary sources, Adam Zamoyski unravels the facts from the legends which grew up around the pianist-statesman.
He clarifies Paderewski’s extreme personality, his complex romantic life, his musical and political careers; and above all attempts to solve the mystery of his undeniable, irresistible power.
Genre: Non Fiction Biographies & Memoirs
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