Background

Władysław Szpilman was born on December 5, 1911, in Sosnowiec, Poland. He was a son of Samuel Szpilman and Edwarda (Rappaport) Szpilman. He also had two sisters and a brother.

Education

Władysław Szpilman studied at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music. In 1931 he studied at the prestigious Academy of Arts in Berlin, Germany.

Career

Władysław Szpilman started his career as a pianist and composer in 1933 when he returned to Warsaw. He was a composer of both classical and popular music and also was the chamber music partner of such acclaimed violinists as Roman Totenberg, Ida Haendel and Henryk Szeryng. In 1935, Szpilman started to work as a pianist at the Polish Radio. He performed classical and jazz music until 1939 when the Polish Radio was bombed on 23 September 1939. During the Second World War Szpilman and his family lived in the ghetto area. Szpilman continued to work as a pianist in restaurants in the ghetto and was able to earn barely enough to support the family. He worked at such cafes as Nowoczesna cafe, cafe on Sienna Street and also the Sztuka Cafe on Leszno Street.

In 1942 Szpilman's family was deported to Treblinka, an extermination camp in the East. Władysław Szpilman managed to escape from the transport loading site with the help of Itzchak Heller, a Jewish policeman in the ghetto. None of Szpilman's family members survived the war. Szpilman was left in the ghetto as a laborer and helped smuggle in weapons for the coming Jewish resistance uprising. He remained in the Warsaw Ghetto until 1943 when it was abolished after the deportation of most of its inhabitants and went into hiding. He found places to hide in Warsaw and survived with the help of his friends from Polish Radio and fellow musicians. In November 1944, Szpilman was hiding out in an abandoned building when he was found by a German officer. However, the officer did not kill Szpilman and helped him to find a better place to hide and brought him food. In 1950, Szpilman found out that the officer's name was Captain Wilm Hosenfeld.

Szpilman resumed his job at Polish Radio in 1945. He became a director of the Popular Music Department at Polish Radio and performed at the same time as a concert pianist and chamber musician in Poland, as well as throughout Europe, Asia, and America. In 1963, Szpilman left his post of a director of the Popular Music Department and together with Bronislav Gimpel founded the Warsaw Piano Quintet, with which Szpilman performed worldwide until 1986.

Władysław Szpilman wrote a memoir about his survival in Warsaw and published the book, Śmierć Miasta in 1946. This book was translated by Anthea Bell published as The Pianist: The Extraordinary Story of One Man’s Survival in Warsaw, 1939-45 and was published in 1999. In 2002, Roman Polanski directed a screen version, also called The Pianist, but Szpilman died before the film was completed.

Achievements

• Władysław Szpilman was a Polish pianist and classical composer who is famous for his book Śmierć Miasta (The Pianist: The Extraordinary True Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939-1945). He was a popular performer on Polish radio and composed about 500 songs, still popular in Poland today, as well as music for radio plays and films.
  
  He received Poland’s Gold Cross of Merit in 1950 and the Order of Polonia Restituta in 1998. After his death, on 25 September 2011, Polish Radio’s Studio 1 was renamed for Władysław Szpilman. On December 4, 2011, a commemorative plaque to Szpilman, engraved in Polish and English, was unveiled at 223 Niepodległości Avenue in Warsaw. 9973 Szpilman, main-belt asteroid, was named after Władysław Szpilman.
  
  Szpilman is widely known as the central figure in the 2002 Roman Polanski film The Pianist, which was based on Szpilman's autobiographical account of how he survived the German occupation of Warsaw and the Holocaust.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Pianist: The Extraordinary True Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939-1945

    (Though he lost his entire family, Szpilman survived in hi...)

    1999

• music

  • Pianist: Original Recordings of Wladyslaw Szpilman 2002

Views

Quotations: "Humanity seems doomed to do more evil than good. The greatest ideal on earth is human love."

"Lying is the worst of all evils. Everything else that is diabolical comes from it."

"And now I was lonelier, I supposed, than anyone else in the world. Even Defoe's creation, Robinson Crusoe, the prototype of the ideal solitary, could hope to meet another human being. Crusoe cheered himself by thinking that such a thing could happen any day, and it kept him going. But if any of the people now around me came near I would need to run for it and hide in mortal terror. I had to be alone, entirely alone, if I wanted to live."

Membership

Władysław Szpilman was a member of the Polish Composers Union, Polish Musicians Association and Polish Society of Authors and Composers.

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• David Patrick Stearns: "Szpilman, who died three years ago, was an artist of sterling pedigree, which all but guarantees his recordings won't be a redux of the David Helfgott-style compromised pianism heard in the wake of the 1996 film Shine. No, from the first notes of both Szpilman discs, you hear poetic, Old-World rubato and that warm blanket of piano tone that's missing from the film's soundtrack performances by Janusz Olejniczak."

Connections

Władysław Szpilman married Halina Szpilman in 1950. The marriage produced two children.

Father:

Samuel Szpilman

Mother:

Edwarda Rappaport

Sister:

Regina Szpilman

Sister:

Halina Szpilman

Brother:

Henryk Szpilman

Wife:

Halina Szpilman

Son:

Christopher Szpilman

Son:

Andrzej Szpilman

References

• Pianist Award-winning drama telling the true story of pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman's experiences in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation. When the Jews of the city find themselves forced into a ghetto, Szpilman finds work playing in a café; and when his family is deported in 1942, he stays behind, works for a while as a labourer, and eventually goes into hiding in the ruins of the war-torn city.
  2002