Ignace Jan Paderewski
Ignace Jan Paderewski, one of the world’s foremost piano virtuosos and one of Poland’s most renowned statesmen, was born in Kurylówka, Podolia, on November 18, 1860. A child prodigy, he was given piano lessons from his third year on. Several patrons arranged to send him to the Warsaw Conservatory, from which he was graduated in 1878. Between 1881 and 1883 he studied composition and orchestration in Berlin, and from 1884 to 1887 piano with Leschetizky in Vienna. Paderewski’s first major success as a pianist came in Vienna in 1889, a concert that was the beginning of a virtuoso career extending for about half a century and carrying him triumphantly to all parts of the world. In 1919 he temporarily withdrew from music to become the first Premier of the Polish Republic, but about a year later he resumed concert work. He made his American debut in New York in 1891, and his last American tour took place in 1939. During the early part of World War II he returned to political activity as President of the Parliament of the Polish Government in Exile. He died in New York on June 29, 1941. By order of President Roosevelt he was given a state burial in Arlington National Cemetery.
Paderewski produced many ambitious compositions, some in the style of Polish folk music; these included the opera Manru, a symphony, piano concerto, the Polish Fantasy for piano and orchestra and numerous shorter compositions for the piano. Ironically it is not for one of his ambitious works that he is most often recalled as a composer, but through a slight piece: the Minuet in G, or Menuet à l’antique, a graceful, well-mannered composition in an 18th-century style. This is one of the three most popular minuets ever written, the other two being by Mozart and Beethoven. Paderewski originally wrote it for the piano; it is the first of six pieces collectively entitled Humoresques de concert, op. 14. Fritz Kreisler transcribed it for violin and piano; Gaspar Cassadó for cello and piano. It has, of course, been frequently adapted for orchestra.