Władysław Szpilman (1911–2000). “The” pianist

The scene with which Roman Polański begins his masterpiece “The Pianist” is one of the most moving in the whole film. The character of the title, played by Adrien Brody, is sitting at the grand piano in the studio of the “Warszawa II” Polish radio station (which after the war was the second national Polskie Radio station) playing “Nocturne in C sharp minor” by Fryderyk Chopin. The date is 23 September 1939, three weeks after the invasion of Poland by German troops. While the piece is on air, severe fighting is raging in Warsaw, and the city is being shelled by the Germans. The surrounding buildings are being destroyed by bombs. In the studio, plaster falls from the ceiling. Explosions can be heard repeatedly outside, causing the windowpanes to burst. 

In his autobiography, Władysław Szpilman remembers the defence of Warsaw in September 1939: “I have no idea myself how I reached the broadcasting centre that day. I ran from the entrance of one building to the entrance of another, I hid, and then ran out into the street again when I thought I no longer heard the whistle of shells close by. I met Mayor Starzyński at the door of the broadcasting centre. He was dishevelled and unshaven, and his face wore an expression of deathly weariness. He hadn’t slept for days. He was the heart and soul of the defence, the real hero of the city. The entire responsibility for the fate of Warsaw rested on his shoulders.”[1] Years later, in an interview with Polskie Radio, he again described the events of that day: “The Germans were shelling the city hard, and it appeared to me as though the artillery was deliberately targeting the broadcasting centre. I was shocked. Olgierd Straszyński, who was setting up the microphone in the studio, wanted to have the grand piano closer to the window. When I asked him to position it more centrally in the room, his answer was: ‘What difference does it make, Mr. Władysław. If you are religious, pray, because if shrapnel detonates here, nothing more will be left of us.’ So I played Chopin for half an hour.”[2]

It was the last live concert broadcast by the station in occupied Warsaw. Shortly after 3pm on the same day, the Nazis bombed the electricity plant in the Warsaw district of Powiśle, which supplied the broadcasting centre with power. The radio station, which had above all kept the will to resist alive among the citizens of Warsaw during the course of the preceding weeks, went silent. Five days later, on 28 September 1939, the city surrendered. 

The power of music
 

The film scene from the recording studio had symbolic value in that it set the power of music, which can survive against all odds, against the destructive forces of war. Indeed it was music that enabled Szpilman to withstand the horrors of the war and which really did save him in the literal sense of the word. When his son Andrzej asked him years later what kept him alive in the rubble of Warsaw, Władysław Szpilman had just one answer: “Music. Only music, and in every sense. Not just as an escape, but as a place in which you could hide your thoughts.”[3] 

Władysław Szpilman’s life was filled with music from an early age. He was born on 5 December 1911 to a Jewish family in Sosnowiec, the oldest of four children of Samuel and Estera, née Rappaport. His father was a violinist in the opera orchestra at the Polish Theatre in Katowice (Teatr Polski w Katowicach), while his mother played the piano in the Sosnowiec Town Theatre (Teatr Miejski w Sosnowcu). Since she was also a piano teacher, Władysław was given his first lessons by her. After elementary school, he began attending the trade school for boys directly next to the family home in Sosnowiec, although he left before he was fully qualified. Instead, he went to Warsaw, to the Chopin Music Academy (Wyższa Szkoła Muzyczna im. Fryderyka Chopina), where he studied piano with Józef Śmidowicz and music theory and harmonics with Michał Biernacki.[4]