Guest
Together with the radio interview of Ignaz Friedman, speaking on Paderewski, in 1940. ~~~ Paderewski, after some years of halt, had to resume his piano career in 1923 for financial reasons, even though he had earned more money than any artist ever did; as throughout the years he made substantial financial contributions for various causes: - As early as 1895 he founded the Paderewski Fund in New York to establish triennial prizes to American composers, regardless of race or religion. Some of those winners were David Diamond, Gardner Reed and Wallingford Rieger. He established a similar fund for Composition in Leipzig in 1898. - In London he gave to the Transvaal War Fund for the wounded, widows and orphans. - To express gratitude to Herbert Hoover and other Americans for helping with the Polish Relief Fund, he turned over the proceeds of a concert series to purchase food for unemployed Americans in the 1920s. - In 1932 he faced an audience of 16,000 in Madison Square Garden, the largest crowd in the history of music at that time, making $50,000 for the benefit of unemployed American musicians. He even paid for his own tickets to the event. - He provided financial help for unemployed musicians in England, funds for playwrights, for Polish composers in Poland, for the construction of a concert hall in Switzerland, for rebuilding a Cathedral in Lausanne, for unemployed workers, for wartime orphans in Italy, for the building of dormitories for music students in France, for the Allied Soldier's Hospital, for Jewish refugees from Germany in Paris in 1933, etc.. - His was the largest individual contribution ($28,600) to the American Legion for disabled veterans. - In 1924 during a benefit concert for Belgian charities, the King and Queen rose together with the audience upon his arrival on the stage, a disarming violation of protocol. - His home in Switzerland was a place of refuge for immigrants of many nationalities during WWII. No one was turned away without having been fed. ~~~
