The Polish pianist Ignacy Paderewski wowed everyone with his appearance.

A compatriot compared his head, "with its aureole of profuse golden hair and delicate, almost feminine, features", to a Botticelli angel.

The painter Burne-Jones called him "an archangel come down to earth".

TS Eliot spoke of him transmitting Chopin's preludes "through his hair and fingertips".

He was the Mr Piano of the early 20th Century. Everybody in the civilised world knew his name.

His American concert tours were triumphs of fame and fortune. Women swooned as he played, crowded him for autographs and threw flowers as his private train steamed by. He lived like a king in his Swiss chateau.

Uniquely, for a musician, he also reached the top in politics, becoming Poland's prime minister in 1919.

A powerful orator, he pleaded his country's post-war cause. He died in 1941, aged 80.

Was he really as great as claimed? By all accounts, he had an indifferent technique and his style was over-romantic and mannered.

Those recordings of his I have heard are unimpressive. A noble tone marred by rhythmic eccentricity and wrong notes.

My hunch is his phenomenal success was mostly down to hype and hair.

-Roger Moodiman, Marine Parade, Brighton