Игнаци Падеревски

Paderewski studied at the Warsaw Institute of Music and taught there before continuing his studies in Berlin and in Vienna with Theodor Leschetizky. Born at Kuryłówka, then in the Russian Empire and now in Ukraine, he drew audiences in Europe and the United States and became particularly identified with Chopin. His compositions include the Minuet in G, a Piano Concerto in A minor, the Polish Fantasy, songs, a Piano Sonata and Variations, and the opera Manru, which remains the only opera by a Polish composer ever staged at the Metropolitan. He campaigned for Polish independence through the First World War, and in 1919 served as prime minister and foreign minister of the restored Polish state. He returned to the concert platform afterwards and died in New York in 1941. He gave away much of what he earned, endowing prizes and relief funds and paying for monuments to Debussy and Colonne in Paris, Liszt in Weimar, Beethoven in Bonn and Chopin at Żelazowa Wola; Poland made him a Knight of the Order of the White Eagle and France gave him the Légion d'honneur. Manru had its first performance in Dresden, and the Symphony Polonia stood beside it in the orchestral catalogue. In the Second World War he presided over the Polish National Council in exile before going to America, where in 1940 he established the Paderewski Fund for Polish Relief.