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Paderewski at Paso Robles: A Great Pianist's Home Away from Home in California
Paderewski at Paso Robles A Great Pianist's Home Away from Home in California Author:Brian McGinty Paderewski at Paso Robles: A Great Pianist's Home Away From Home in California. Overland Books, 2004. Cover and text designed by 1106 Design, Phoenix, Arizona. 96 pp with 20 black and white illustrations. Paderewski at Paso Robles is the story of a twenty-five-year-long love affair between a great man and a little town in central Califor... more »nia. The Polish pianist, composer, and statesman Ignacy Jan Paderewski (1860-1941) was an international celebrity of already legendary proportions when he came to Paso Robles in 1914, seeking relief from the debilitating neuritis that had forced him to suspend his latest American concert tour. Paderewski found a "cure" in the mud baths and sulphur springs of Paso Robles, but not before he began to buy up large tracts of land west of the town. Between his wildly popular concert tours of Europe and America, and his epochal service as premier of Poland at the end of World War I, Paderewski sojourned regularly at Paso Robles, which became his American home away from home. His Paso Robles properties eventually included 2,864 acres, on which he grew almonds and choice wine grapes. He never built a house in the town, however, preferring to make his headquarters in the grand old Paso Robles Hot Springs Hotel, built between 1889 and 1891. Paderewski was planning a return to Paso Robles when the Hot Springs Hotel burned to the ground in December 1940 (its site is now occupied by the Paso Robles Inn), and he died six months later in New York. But the people of the town never forgot him--nor did the music lovers, wine enthusiasts, and Polish and American patriots who remembered his enduring contributions to music, wine, and international friendship.« less