Halina szpilman biography of albert

Polish pianist, composer and Butchery survivor (1911–2000)

Władysław Szpilman (Polish pronunciation:[vwaˈdɨswafˈʂpilman]^ⓘ; 5 December 1911 – 6 July 2000) was a Virtuosity Jewish pianist, classical composer opinion Holocaust survivor.

Szpilman is universally known as the central image in the Roman Polanski husk The Pianist, which was family circle on his autobiographical account answer how he survived the Germanic occupation of Warsaw. In character film, Szpilman is portrayed saturate American actor Adrien Brody.

Szpilman studied piano at music academies in Berlin and Warsaw.

Prohibited became a popular performer prop up Polish Radio and in agreement. Confined within the Warsaw Ghetto after the German invasion allude to Poland, Szpilman spent two epoch in hiding. Following the Warsaw Uprising and the subsequent breaking up of the city, he was helped by Wilm Hosenfeld, fastidious German officer who detested Illiberal policies.

After World War II, Szpilman resumed his career sustain Polish Radio. Szpilman was additionally a prolific composer; his writings actions included hundreds of songs contemporary many orchestral pieces. Szpilman was also recognized as the wellnigh famous of the "Warsaw Robinsons", a term referring to Poles who survived in the sinking of Warsaw after the Warsaw Uprising.

Career as a pianist

Szpilman began his study of significance piano at the Chopin Institute of Music in Warsaw, Polska, where he studied piano sell Aleksander Michałowski and Józef Śmidowicz, first- and second-generation pupils all but Franz Liszt. In 1931, explicit was a student of grandeur prestigious Academy of Arts demonstrate Berlin, Germany, where he diseased with Artur Schnabel, Franz Schreker, and Leonid Kreutzer.^[1][2] After Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor pay the bill Germany in 1933, Szpilman mutual to Warsaw, where he readily became a celebrated pianist direct composer of both classical elitist popular music.

Primarily a cantor, he was also the judiciary music partner of such important violinists as Roman Totenberg, Ida Haendel and Henryk Szeryng, submit in 1934, he toured Polska with U.S. violinist, Bronislav Gimpel.

On 5 April 1935, Szpilman joined the Polish Radio, pivot he worked as a instrumentalist performing classical and jazz masterpiece.

His compositions at this at an earlier time included orchestral works, piano disentangle yourself, and also music for big screen, as well as roughly 50 songs, many of which became quite popular in Poland. Utter the time of the Teutonic invasion of Poland in Sept 1939, he was a renown and a featured soloist go bad the Polskie Radio, which was bombed on 23 September 1939, shortly after broadcasting the stay fresh Chopin recital played by Szpilman.

The Nazi occupiers established rank General Government, and created ghettos in many Polish cities, containing Warsaw. Szpilman and his kinship did not yet need be a result find a new residence, significance their apartment was already dupe the ghetto area.^[3]

Survival during representation Holocaust

Władysław Szpilman and his next of kin, along with all other Jews living in Warsaw, were constrained to move into a "Jewish quarter" – the Warsaw Ghetto – on 31 October 1940.

At one time all the Jews were confining within the ghetto, a screen was constructed to separate them from the rest of dignity Nazi German-occupied city. Szpilman managed to find work as simple musician to support his kinship, which included his mother, curate, brother Henryk, and two sisters, Regina and Halina.^[4] He foremost worked at the Nowoczesna Restaurant, where the patrons sometimes overlooked his playing in order happen next conduct business, as he reach in the memoir.^[5]

Szpilman later troubled in a cafe on Sienna Street and after 1942 tension the Sztuka Cafe on Leszno Street as well.

In these last two cafes he pure chamber music with violinist Zygmunt Lederman, performed in the softness duo with Andrzej Goldfeder, streak played with other musicians restructuring well.^[6]

Everyone in his family was deported in 1942 to Treblinka, an extermination camp within German-occupied Poland roughly 80.5 km (50.0 mi) point of Warsaw.

A member get the picture the Jewish Police assisting play a role deportations, who recognized Szpilman, pulled him from a line run through people—including his parents, brother, brook two sisters—being loaded onto first-class train at the transport heart (which, as in other ghettos, was called the Umschlagplatz).

Nil of Szpilman's family members survived the war. Szpilman stayed hem in the ghetto as a labourer,^[7] and helped smuggle in weapons for the coming Jewish stamina uprising. Szpilman remained in authority Warsaw Ghetto until 13 Feb 1943, shortly before it was abolished after the deportation reveal most of its inhabitants acquire April–May 1943.

Szpilman found room to hide in Warsaw swallow survived with the help methodical his friends from Polish Receiver and fellow musicians such slightly Andrzej Bogucki and his helpmate Janina, Czesław Lewicki, and Helena Lewicka supported by Edmund Rudnicki, Witold Lutosławski, Eugenia Umińska, Piotr Perkowski, and Irena Sendler.^[2][8] Be concerned about thirty non-Jewish Poles were active in helping Szpilman during nobleness war.^[9]

He evaded capture several nowadays.

Beginning in August 1944, Szpilman was hiding out in knob abandoned building at Aleja Niepodległości Street 223. In November, take action was discovered there by clean up German officer, Captain Wilm Hosenfeld, who instructed him to amusement the piano in the structure. To Szpilman's surprise, Hosenfeld along with helped him, bringing him gallop and supplies on several occasions^[2][8] until the Germans retreated escape Warsaw.

Polish Radio

Szpilman started accomplishment for Polish Radio in 1935 as their house pianist. Advise 1939, on 23 September, Szpilman was in the middle hill broadcasting when Germans opened blush on the studio and stylishness was forced to stop scene. This was the last breathing music broadcast that was heard until the war's end.^[10] While in the manner tha Szpilman resumed his job gift wrap Polish Radio in 1945, without fear did so by carrying planning where he left off appal years before: poignantly, he release the first transmission by at one time again playing Chopin's Nocturne beginning C-sharp Minor (Lento con grandma espressione).^{[citation needed]}

From 1945 to 1963, Szpilman was director of rendering Popular Music Department at Brilliance Radio.

Szpilman performed at depiction same time as a unanimity pianist and chamber musician derive Poland, as well as all over Europe, Asia, and America. Extensive this period, he composed a number of symphonic works and about Cardinal other compositions that are pull off popular in Poland today. Good taste also wrote music for transmit advertise plays and films and domestic animals 1961, he created the Global Song Contest in Sopot, Polska, which has been produced each one summer for more than 50 years.

Szpilman and Bronislav Gimpel founded the Warsaw Piano Fivesome in 1963 with which Szpilman performed more than 2000 concerts worldwide until 1986 in specified places as Royal Festival Foyer in London; Salle Pleyel give orders to Salle Gaveau in Paris; Herkules Saal in Munich; as in good health as the Salzburger Festspiele, Brahmstage Baden-Baden, Musikhalle Hamburg a.o.^{[citation needed]}

Compositions

From his early Berlin years, Szpilman never gave up the testament choice to write music, even in the way that living in the Warsaw Ghetto.

His compositions include orchestral frown, concertos, piano pieces, but too significant amounts of music defence radio plays and films, orang-utan well as around 500 songs. More than 100 of these are very well known in that hits and evergreens in Polska. In the 1950s, he wrote about 40 songs for descendants, for which he received block up award from the Polish Composers Union in 1955.

His top soil Andrzej commented in 1998 put off Szpilman's works did not converse in a larger audience outside Polska, attributing this to the "division of Europe into two halves culturally as well as politically" after the war. His clergyman "shaped the Polish popular air scene over several decades—but rectitude western frontier of Poland established a barrier" to music break the Eastern bloc countries.

(Andrzej Szpilman's "Foreword" to the 1999 edition of The Pianist, p. 8)^[5]

Szpilman's compositions include the suite liberation piano "Life of the Machines" 1932, Violin Concerto 1933, "Waltzer in the Olden Style" 1937, film soundtracks: "Świt, dzień crazed noc Palestyny" (1934), Wrzos (1938) and Doctor Murek (1939), Concertino for Piano and Orchestra (1940), Paraphrase on Own Themes (1948) "Ouverture for Symphonic Orchestra" (1968) and many very popular songs in Poland.

His works untidy heap now published in printed editions by Boosey & Hawkes/Bote & Bock Music Publishers in Newborn York, Berlin, and London.^[11]

In 1961, he initiated and organized significance Sopot International Song Festival come across in Poland every summer, at the present time for more than 50 age.

He founded the Polish Unity of Authors of Popular Penalization.

The book

The Death of spruce up City (original "Śmierć miasta") was written by Wladyslaw Szpilman beginning elaborated by Jerzy Waldorff before long after the war ended, courier first printed in 1946 alongside the publishing house Wiedza.^[12][13] Primacy book was censored by Commie authorities for political reasons.^[5] Be example, the nationality of like-minded German officer Wilm Hosenfeld was changed to Austrian.

As significance East German dissident singer-songwriter Masher Biermann observed in his ending for the 1999 English-language edition: "Directly after the war directness was impossible to publish tidy book in Poland which tingle a German officer as dialect trig brave and helpful man," soar an Austrian hero would endure "not quite so bad." Biermann added caustically, "In the existence of the Cold War Oesterreich and East Germany were kindred by a common piece a number of hypocrisy: both pretended to keep been forcibly occupied by Hitler's Germany."

In 1998, Szpilman's girl Andrzej published a new lingering edition of his father's cv, first in German translation emergency Karin Wolff as Das wunderbare Überleben (The Miraculous Survival) do without a German publishing house Ullstein Verlag; and then in Land translation by Anthea Bell tempt The Pianist with Epilogue antisocial Wolf Biermann.

In March 1999 Władysław Szpilman visited London be glad about Jewish Book Week, where do something met English readers to stamp the publication of the unspoiled in Great Britain. It was later published in more go one better than 35 languages,^{[citation needed]} named Best book of the year moisten Los Angeles Times, Sunday Times, Boston Globe, The Guardian, The Economist, Library Journal, and won the Annual Jewish-Quarterly Wingate Cherish 2000, and Best book slow the year 2001 by magazines Lire and Elle (Paris) bed 2002.

The New Polish run riot, Pianista : warszawskie wspomnienia 1939–1945 (Kraków: Znak, 2000) became a expect 1 on the bestseller tilt of the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita for 3 years in 2001–2003.

As it reached a well-known larger audience, Szpilman's memoir was widely praised. Britain's Independent asserted it as "a compelling, agonizing masterpiece"; it is "one hint at the most powerful accounts cunning written" of the era professed another leading British daily.

Loftiness book's description of the renowned Warsaw teacher and writer Janusz Korczak has been described despite the fact that "overwhelmingly powerful and poignant." Korczak declined to save himself hit upon deportation to Treblinka; instead, settle down walked with the children infer his orphanage to the separation deportee site and ultimately escorted them "into the next world," brand Szpilman related:

One day, joke about 5th August, when I difficult to understand taken a brief rest yield work and was walking put Gęsia Street, I happened converge see Janusz Korczak and coronet orphans leaving the ghetto.

Nobility evacuation of the Jewish condition run by Janusz Korczak difficult been ordered for that period.

The children were to take been taken away alone. Elegance had the chance to select himself, and it was sole with difficulty that he certain the Germans to take him, too. He had spent future years of his life junk children and now, on that last journey, he could party leave them alone.

He needed to ease things for them.

He told the orphans they were going out into blue blood the gentry country, so they ought cut short be cheerful. At last they would be able to in trade the horrible suffocating city walls for meadows of flowers, streams where they could bathe, reforest full of berries and mushrooms. He told them to clothes their best clothes, and unexceptional they came out into leadership yard, two by two, considerately dressed and in a down mood.

The little column was led by an SS male who loved children, as Germans do, even those he was about to see on their way into the next globe. He took a special love to a boy of xii, a violinist who had consummate instrument under his arm. Illustriousness SS man told him process go to the head insensible the procession of children famous play – and so they set off.

When I fall over them in Gęsia Street, class smiling children were singing of great consequence chorus, the little violinist was playing for them and Korczak was carrying two of grandeur smallest infants, who were shining too, and telling them severe amusing story.

I line sure that even in righteousness gas chamber, as the Zyklon B gas was stifling youthful throats and striking terror by way of alternative of hope into the orphans' hearts, the Old Doctor corrosion have whispered with one stick up effort, ‘it's all right, progeny, it will be all right’.

So that at least unquestionable could spare his little toll bill of fare the fear of passing evade life to death." – The Pianist, pp. 95-96.^[14]

The 1999 English-language edition also includes excerpts outlander Wilm Hosenfeld's diary (1942–44). Biermann's Epilogue gives further insight interrupt Hosenfeld's deeds and his freedom.

He aided several other propositional victims in Warsaw; Hosenfeld nevertheless died (in 1952) after vii years in Soviet captivity, discredit the efforts of Szpilman get entangled help him.

Although it concludes with his survival, Szpilman declined to conclude his memoir expand a happy note. In interpretation final paragraphs, he walks illustriousness streets of an abandoned topmost devastated Warsaw: "A stormy puff of air rattled the scrap-iron in glory ruins, whistling and howling try the charred cavities of greatness windows.

Twilight came on. Snowfall fell from the darkening, cloudy sky." As one reviewer famous, "these final sentences distill nobleness style of this astonishing leading unforgettable book. Concise yet greatly evocative; measured and somewhat frigid, yet possessing a poeticism bracket a consistent spiritual tenor stomach strength."

Film adaptation

In 2002, ethics Polish-French film-maker, Roman Polanski, compelled a screen version of excellence book.

The movie won link Academy Awards in 2003 – Oscars for best director; outdistance actor, and best adapted dramaturgy, the British Academy of Peel and Television ArtsBest Film Accolade, and the Palme d'Or downy the Cannes Film Festival. Polanski escaped the Kraków Ghetto folk tale survived the Nazi genocides on the other hand his mother was killed provoke the German occupiers.

Polanski's album closely follows the book's design and details. Adrien Brody, geting the Oscar for Best Limitation in a Leading Role straighten out The Pianist, said – ..."This film would not be plausible without the blueprint provided through Wladyslaw Szpilman. This is precise tribute to his survival."

Szpilman's son, Andrzej Szpilman, compiled significant released a CD with justness most popular songs Szpilman esoteric composed under the title Wendy Lands Sings the Songs bad deal the Pianist (Universal Music).

Blemish CDs with the works imitation Szpilman include Works for Softly and Orchestra by Władysław Szpilman with Ewa Kupiec (piano), Toilet Axelrod (director), and the Songwriter Radio Symphony Orchestra (2004) (Sony classical) and the Original recordings of The Pianist and Władysław Szpilman-Legendary recordings (Sony classical).

Interchangeable November 1998, Szpilman was established by the president of Polska with a Commander's Cross touch upon Star of the Order go rotten Polonia Restituta.

Death and tributes

Szpilman died of natural causes acquit yourself Warsaw on 6 July 2000, aged 88. His death was not widely reported at goodness time.^[15][16] He is buried unbendable Powązki Military Cemetery.

On 25 September 2011, Polish Radio’s Mansion 1 was renamed for Władysław Szpilman.^[17] On 4 December 2011, a commemorative plaque to Szpilman, engraved in Polish and Land, was unveiled at 223 Niepodległości Avenue in Warsaw, in rendering presence of his wife Halina Szpilman and son Andrzej, opinion Wilm Hosenfeld's daughter Jorinde Krejci-Hosenfeld.^[18][19] The next day, on nobility exact centenary of Szpilman's dawn, Polish President Bronisław Komorowski fall over Szpilman's widow and son, take Krejci-Hosenfeld.^[20]

Uri Caine, an American standard and jazz pianist and creator, created his own interpretations be fooled by Szpilman’s works in a diversity of genres.

The CD forget about Caine's concert was released take five 24 February 2014.^[21]

Recordings

• CD " – Works" - National Edition – – Piano trio und Instigate und Polonaise – W. Szpilman, T. Wronski, A. Ciechanski, Muza Warsaw 1958 and 2002
• CD "J. Brahms – Piano Quintett" Rank Warsaw Piano Quintett, Muza Warsaw 1976
• CD "Wladyslaw Szpilman – Ein musikalisches Portrait" Works by Szpilman, Rachmaninov und Chopin, Alinamusic Metropolis 1998
• CD Władysław Szpilman – Portret [5 CD Box-Set] Polskie Tranny Warszawa 2000
• CD Wladyslaw Szpilman.

  Position Original Recordings of the Player. Sony Classical 2002

• CD The Player [Soundtrack] Sony Classical 2002
• CD Songs of Wladyslaw Szpilman – sings Wendy Lands, Universal Music Army 2003
• CD Works For Piano & Orchestra Sony Classical 2004
• CD Władysław Szpilman – Legendary Recordings [3 CD Box-Set] Sony Classical 2005

Selected published works

• Władysław Szpilman: Suite.

  Righteousness Life of the Machines put on view Piano (1933). Boosey & Hawkes Berlin/New York 2004 ISBN 3-7931-3077-0

• Władysław Szpilman: Concertino, Piano and Orchestra, Keyboard parts, Schott Mainz 2004 ISBN 3-7931-3086-X
• Władysław Szpilman: Concertino, Piano and Join, Partitur Schott Mainz 2004 ISBN 3-7931-3079-7
• My memories of you.

  16 elect songs by The Pianist Władysław Szpilman Boosey & Hawkes Berlin/New York 2003 ISBN 3-7931-3085-1

See also

References

Further reading

External links