After a limited run there, until September 12, the production will transfer to London’s Park Theatre on October 15, where a total of eight performances are planned until November 28.
Entitled The Pianist, the production is written and directed by Thom Southerland, whose credits include Titanic the Musical. It features Szpilman’s own music with new lyrics, freshly orchestrated by Simon Lee, Andrew Lloyd-Webber's long time Musical Director.
In a feature setting the scene for the event, The Times interviewed Szpilman’s son, Andrzej. A dentist by profession, but also a composer and music producer, he served as an adviser for the production.
Andrzej Szpilman told The Times: “I’ve always felt a kind of injustice because my father’s music couldn’t cross the borders of western Europe and so audiences in the West didn’t know it. I’ve dreamt of giving them that chance”.
Szpilman’s extraordinary life was transferred to the silver screen by director Roman Polański in the Oscar-awarded movie The Pianist.
Andrzej Szpilman describes Polański’s film as a masterpiece, but says that the director’s portrayal of his father is “only partially accurate”. He explains: “It doesn’t show him as the real person he was. My father survived because he was so well known. We’re now supplementing the story.”
The production is set in 1945 as Władysław Szpilman is writing his memoir.
According to Southerland, the best word to describe the production is “a memory play”. He told The Times: “It’s not linear. Władysław seeks solace in his own space to be able to write. And as he writes, his memories come back.”
The production includes more than 30 of Szpilman’s classical compositions and contemporary pop songs.
On his efforts to preserve his father’s legacy, Andrzej Szpilman says: “I do it for humanity simply. The story is important as it shows that even in such tragic circumstances there was hope and the will to survive. My father and his artistry won the war against Hitler.”
Born in 1911, Szpilman studied piano performance and composition in Warsaw and Berlin. He worked at Polish Radio for four years until September 23, 1939. On that day, he played the last recital of Chopin’s music in the studio of Polish Radio, which subsequently stopped functioning as a result of German bombings.
He was then forced to move into the Jewish Ghetto, along with his parents, two sisters and the brother, all of whom perished in the Holocaust. Szpilman miraculously survived the hostilities. In the final months of the war, he found shelter in the ruins of Warsaw and survived thanks to help from his Polish friends and German officer Wilm Hosenfeld.
After the war, he served as director of Polish Radio’s music department for 18 years. He then founded the Warsaw Piano Quintet, which toured the world for more than two decades.
His compositional output includes some 500 songs, many of which became hits, and several symphonic works.
Szpilman published his wartime memoirs soon after World War II ended, but the book was soon banned by Poland’s Stalinist authorities. It was republished by Szpilman’s son in 1998, in German and English, and has since been translated into more than 35 languages.
Szpilman died in 2000 at the age of 88.
(mk/jh)