Nearly all the musicians in Paris came to the piano recital given at the Salle Erard on the evening of March 3, 1889. The French composers Gounod, Massenet, and Saint-Saens were there. So was their famous Russian colleague, Tchaikovsky. It was the sort of audience that is usually described as “small but distinguished.” It included many members of the Polish aristocracy in exile who lived in Paris, their “second capital.” And they had brought with them whatever friends among the French nobility they could round up for the occasion. It made no difference to them that they had never even heard the name of the young man who was playing. The fact that this Ignace Jan Paderewski was a Polish artist was all they needed to know about him. From Paderewski’s point of view, however, the two most important people in the audience were two Frenchmen named Edouard Colonne and Charles Lamoureux. Both men were conductors of highly successful orchestras bearing their names. And each man was not only constantly on the alert for new talent, but was eager to be first in bringing it before the public. Paderewski sat in his dressing room before the concert, completely alone, as was his habit. He was not thinking about the audience or anything else in the world except the music he would soon be playing: Beethoven’s Thirty-Two Variations in C minor; some Chopin (whose music he loved above any other and which he felt that he, a Pole, could play as Paris had not heard it before), and one of the most brilliant and fiery of the Hungarian Rhapsodies by Liszt. The manager of the hall had been surprised when the young visitor had asked to have the lights lowered to about half their usual brightness. So was the audience, accustomed as it was to recitals played with the gaslight blazing at full power. But early in his concert career Paderewski had found that a bright light on the keys of the piano made it almost impossible for him to play. What happened that night in the Salle Erard? We have a report about it from a man who was himself one of the world’s greatest pianists, and no tribute can be held in higher regard than that spoken by one artist about another. Alfred Cortot said of Paderewski’s Paris debut, “He appeared with the suddenness of a lightning stroke, making a blurring, an eruption in our hearts. Instead of a pianist, an inspired poet took possession of the keyboard.” The listeners, charmed from the first moment by the romantic appearance of the newcomer, grew more and more enthusiastic with each succeeding piece. But after the last encore—the encores lasted for nearly an hour—the audience was on its feet thundering its approval.