It's just a small snippet, but among many talents Paderewski could prepare and deliver excellent and efficient speeches. Their texts can be found on the internet. He was also a brilliant diplomat. Number 13 of Wilson's 14 point peace plan after World War I is pretty much Paderewski's job.
Paderewski's father had two close friends who were German. The senior Paderewski would ask his son to play the piano for his friends, whenever they came to visit. After playing the piano, his fathers friends would always complement Paderewski by saying: “Only a German could compose such music”! As a joke, Paderewski composed a piece he called Minuet in G. When it was time for Paderewski to play the piano for his fathers two German friends, he played his Minuet in G. Upon receiving the customary complement, that “Only a German could compose such music”, Paderewski slammed down the piano fallboard, stood up, and proclaimed that he had written it the night before, and left the room. That is a story that I read 61 years ago, and I can imagine the tension that the red headed pianist left in the room.
My father used to play this. All I remembered was the name of the composer. To find it and a video of Paderewski himself playing it at the same time is quite a nice bonus.
Świetne wideo. Dzięki za wrzutę. Ignacy Paderewski. Pianista, dyplomata i przyjaciel wielu prezydentów USA. Dla odrodzenia Polski poświęcił karierę. Przemierzał polityczne salony świata i skutecznie wykorzystywał swoją sławę dla RP. Chwała mu za to!
Correct! From the movie "Moonlight Sonata" in which the airplane IJP was in had to make an emergency landing and the Baroness(?) of a nearby estate sent a wagon to pick them up and bring them back to her estate. She instantly recognized him and in this scene she took him to an orphanage she supported and the film tells the rest of the story. The movie was done in 16mm film and taken from Ted Turners film vault and recorded onto VHS tape and later onto DVD by a Paderewski aficionado in Paso Robles, Ca. Where IJP bought a ranch. He originally came to P.R. On a private railway car for treatment of his neuritis at the hot mineral springs mud/sulphur baths there.
pianist Paderewski developed such power in his hands and fingers from a constant swarming up and down the keyboard that he could crush a potato in his hands and fingers. I am a practicing strongman who also plays a few instruments and enjoy piano, I hadn't heard of this pianist until I found him through studying grip strength in old time strongman history.
@inbra911 Of course. I haven't seen the movie, but from the poster's comments, this is apparently from "Moonlight Sonata", in which Paderewski was indeed featured. The film is supposed to be about survivors of a plane crash getting stranded at some remote estate (I think), so I presume this scene takes place before the crash.
I occasionally come back to this video after mostly getting my classical music enjoyment from Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, Mozart, Brahms and Schubert. Something always brings be back, and it’s difficult to put my finger on what it is, though it actually has something to do with the girls dancing with such obviously amateur - completely untrained for that matter - skill. And for that matter, the very natural and unglamorously cute and vulnerable children, just trying to be happy and enjoy the moment. What this performance as a whole seems to embody is a certain kind of heart, heart ahead of intellect and heart ahead of perfection, in just such a sincere way, and the suggestion, implied in Paderewski’s piece, that the music, if it is going to be worth anything, must aim above all to make people feel good (including about themselves) and be happy. Although this will seem racist, it needn’t be viewed this way, but let me suggest: this whole scene and music are so purely “white,” ethnically “Caucasian”, more than just about anything imaginable. Just look at the dancing! And the music and scene reduce this notion to its purest essence and celebrate it. (Funnily/interestingly enough, the inability to dance is part of it!) So it in effect says: “Everybody is who they are, girl, boy, white, black, Christian, Jewish, sick, healthy…” but everybody is PRECIOUS, no matter who they are, just because they are unique, a combination of all these characteristics that they belong to. In a word, this is the purest celebration of life and the preciousness of every individual, simply because they are a human being, a status which implicitly includes an ethnic component. So this performance implicitly celebrates “whiteness.” It’s weird to say that this is a big part of its appeal, but this can be the case without claiming superiority of whiteness over other racial categories. One can conceivably enjoy this aspect and feel the same way about very Asian or Black (heavily African in style, mood, or “flavor”) musical videos. In other words, there is such a pronounced racial or ethnic element to this that raises all kinds of challenges, contributing to this being such a fascinating video. It will never be one of my real “favorites,” but it continues to interest and draw me occasionally.
