The two artists looked at each other and shrugged. It was worth a try, since there was nothing else to do. In later years, Paderewski loved to tell this story. “Ah! You should have seen him!” he wrote. “His hands went like lightning. They flew like birds from side to side. He had to lean way across the piano—back and forth he weaved and darted in constant motion.... What an experience!” The concert was a huge success. The clever hammer-pusher had been wrong in only one respect: his modest belief that the audience would not notice him. After the concert as Paderewski was walking through the lobby, he heard a man say to his wife, “How did you like that young pianist?” “Oh, he was all right,” came the answer, “but the other one, you know! The second pianist who was playing at the back of the piano! He was the best, I thought. He worked much harder than the other one. He was the real artist!” Paderewski worked nearly two years in Berlin, interrupted only by a short period of teaching in Warsaw. There, in addition to a heavy teaching program, he began taking private lessons in Latin, mathematics, literature, and history. He did not want his education to be completely one-sided. He had, at the time, no way of realizing how wise a decision this was. Paderewski’s studies in composition had been brilliant, and the piano pieces he published were unusually successful. One of the first pianists to play his work in public was the popular Madame Essipoff. She included his Variations in A minor on many of her programs. To Paderewski, however, Essipoff’s greatest attraction was not her success as a pianist but the fact that she was married to the great Theodore Leschetizky. Leschetizky lived in Vienna, but he was a fellow Pole. He was, in addition, the most famous piano teacher in the world. The thought of a piano career had remained at the back of Paderewski’s mind during every minute of his years in Warsaw and Berlin, although reason told him to abandon the idea. (So had every teacher with whom he had ever studied.) The turning point in his thinking came about quite casually. One night his publisher invited him to dinner to meet Anton Rubinstein, a brilliant and famous concert pianist. (He occupied much the same position in his day as his namesake, Artur Rubinstein, occupies in ours.) The famous pianist was charming to the relatively unknown composer and asked to hear some of his piano compositions. When Paderewski had played several pieces, Rubinstein said, “How very fine they are! You must compose more for the piano!” Paderewski smiled diffidently. “Oh, I can’t do too well writing for piano,” he said modestly, “because I play so little myself.” Rubinstein’s eyebrows lifted. “Nonsense!” he said. “You have an inborn technique. You could have a splendid piano career, if you wanted one. I’m sure of it!”