Władysław Szpilman (December 5, 1911 – July 6, 2000) was a Polish pianist, … Read Full Bio ↴Władysław Szpilman (December 5, 1911 – July 6, 2000) was a Polish pianist, composer, and memoirist. He is best known as the protagonist of the Roman Polański film The Pianist, based on Szpilman's autobiographical book recounting how he survived the Holocaust.
Szpilman was born in Sosnowiec, Congress Poland, Russian Empire, to a Jewish family. After early piano lessons with his mother Esthera, he continued his piano studies in the early 1930s at the Warsaw Conservatory under Aleksander Michałowski and at the Academy of Arts (Akademie der Künste) in Berlin under Artur Schnabel and Leonid Kreutzer. He also studied composition with Franz Schreker.
The Nazi-led General Government established ghettos in many Polish cities, including Warsaw, and Szpilman was forced to move to the Warsaw Ghetto with his family. He continued to work as a pianist in restaurants in the ghetto. Szpilman remained in the Warsaw Ghetto until it was abolished after the deportation of most of its inhabitants.
None of his family members survived the war. As set out in his memoir, Szpilman found places to hide in Warsaw and survived with the help of his friends from Polish Radio and in part by a German captain, Wilm Hosenfeld.
From 1945 to 1963 Szpilman was director of the Music Department at Polish Radio. During this period he composed several symphonic works and about 500 songs, still popular in Poland today, as well as music for radio plays and film.
In the 1950s he wrote about 40 songs for children, for which he received an award from the Polish Composers Union in 1955.
In 1961 he initiated and organized Sopot International Song Festival in Poland and founded the Polish Union of Authors of Popular Music.
Szpilman also performed as a soloist and with violinists Bronislaw Gimpel, Roman Totenberg, Ida Haendel and Henryk Szeryng. In 1963, Szpilman and Gimpel founded the Warsaw Piano Quintet, with which Szpilman performed worldwide until 1986.
In November 1998 Wladyslaw Szpilman was honoured by the president of Poland with a Commander's Cross with Star of the Order of Polonia Restituta.
Szpilman died in Warsaw in 2000 at age 88.