The Pocket Paderewski

Book excerpt: From silent cinema pianist born in the Australian Bush to celebrity virtuoso entertaining Royalty in Mayfair--an extraordinarily magical and inspirational musical odyssey. The concert pianist Edward Cahill (1885-1975) rose to prominence from humble beginnings in the inauspicious setting of 19th-century rural Queensland. At a time when Australian concert artists were virtually unknown in Europe, he dazzled the salons of royalty, aristocratic patronage and privilege in London, Paris and the French Riviera during the glittering decades of the 1920s and 1930s ... 'With what vigour, what virtuosity and poetry this master plays the piano!' --Chronique musicale, Montreux, 5 May 1939