Doctors warned of permanent damage, but Paderewski insisted on honoring his pledge, even though it meant teaching himself to play with just four fingers of his right hand. He had often complained lightly about the 'dangerous' action, cheerfully referring to the piano as 'my enemy.' But after Rochester he played in constant pain, needing massages and jolts of electricity before concerts just to get his injured finger to move. But he had seriously injured his hand on the stiff hammer action of the Steinway. He kept playing and managed to finish the concert. Immediately, a scorching pain shot up his right arm as if something had shattered. In Rochester, New York, he walked onto the stage and struck the opening chords of Beethoven's Appassionata. In an era when solo piano recitals were uncommon, Paderewski packed concert halls everywhere he went. Concerts often lasted for hours, but they included encores to appease the roaring applause. We are not easily pleased here.' Famous last words.Ī grueling schedule put Paderewski through 107 concerts in just 117 days. Paderewski, you need not expect anything like that here in America. 'You have had brilliant successes in London and Paris,' Tretbar declared, 'but let me tell you, Mr. Ignace himself arrived in New York on November 1891, only to be gloomily greeted at dockside by Steinway representative Charles Tretbar bearing grim tidings. Paderewski's triumphal assault on America started with a recommendation to William Steinway from an agent in London, urging him to sign a young Polish pianist for a U.S. 'Paddymania,' a London newspaper gasped, 'has reached such heights that three New York ladies have embroidered musical phrases from Minuet on their stockings.'

Today Paderewski is often recalled not for his music but for his famous epigram about diligence: 'If I don't practice for one day, I know it if I don't practice for two days, the critics know it if I don't practice for three days, the audience knows it.' By 1892, though, Paderewski was more than a great pianist he was a mass-market wonder who inspired ad campaigns for shampoos, candy, soaps and party treats, even a windup toy of a little man frenetically pounding his little piano. 71227 at the National Museum of American History - a few words in black ink scrawled onto gilt metal - bears testimony to a trying musical tour and the great musician who survived it: 'This piano has been played by me during the season 1892-1893 in seventy-five concerts. Only the inscription under the lid of Steinway concert grand No. The ivories are white, all bloodstains now carefully removed. Its gleaming black frame perches with dignity on three fluted columns.

Stage tiny piano