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True; but improvising on a well-known work is rather a dangerous thing to do in order to improve a bad case. Apropos of this, I am reminded of an incident which occurred at one of my European recitals. It was a wholly new program which I was to give at Vevay. I had been staying with Paderewski, and went from Morges to Vevay, to give the recital.
He was to his day what Leschetizky, the teacher of Paderewski, is now. Very soon after her meeting with Schumann, Clara made her public début, and with great success. Among those who heard and praised her highly during this first year of her public career was Paganini.
The art of Paderewski recalls to me the art of the most skilled and the most distinguished of equilibrists, himself a Pole, Paul Cinquevalli. People often speak, wrongly, of Paderewski's skill as acrobatic. The word conveys some sense of disparagement and, so used, is inaccurate.
At last Mendelssohn's organ sonatas were reached and with them a call organists, like pastors, have calls to a fashionable church. The salary was fair and Mr. Pinton grew side-whiskers. He heard Paderewski play Chopin, and became a crazy lover of the piano. He hired a small upright and studied finger exercises.
"One point Paderewski is very particular about, and that is fingering. He often carefully marks the fingering for a whole piece; once this is decided upon it must be kept to. He believes in employing a fingering which is most comfortable to the hand, as well as one which, in the long run, will render the passage most effective.
Before the Beethoven there had been a "Variation and Fugue on an original theme," in which Paderewski played his own music, really as if he were improvising it there and then.
Mere derision, mere contempt, never produced or could produce parody. A man who simply despises Paderewski for having long hair is not necessarily fitted to give an admirable imitation of his particular touch on the piano. If a man wishes to parody Paderewski's style of execution, he must emphatically go through one process first: he must admire it, and even reverence it.
That is why Liszt is the test rather of the virtuoso than of the interpreter, why, therefore, it was so infinitely more important that Paderewski should have played the Beethoven sonata as impersonally as he did than that he should have played the Liszt sonata with so much personal abandonment.
"'It is just because I am an artist that I ought at all times to play in the same way. I have thought out the conception of that piece, and am in duty bound to express my ideal as nearly as possible each time I perform it. "Paderewski instructs, as he does everything else, with magnificent generosity. He takes no account of time.
Great care should be taken when using this principle, or lameness will result. A low seat at the piano is a necessity for this practise; sitting low is an aid to weight playing: we all know how low Paderewski himself sits at the instrument. "You ask what technical material is employed. Czerny, Op. 740; not necessarily the entire opus; three books are considered sufficient. Also Clementi's Gradus.
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