Entitled The Pianist, the production is written and directed by Thom Southerland, whose credits include Titanic the Musical.
It will feature Szpilman’s own music with new lyrics and freshly orchestrated by Simon Lee, Andrew Lloyd-Webber's longtime musical director.
Park Theatre writes on its website: “Original compositions from the so-called 'Polish Gershwin' score his story: popular songs that had Warsaw humming, compositions that made him a star. The show is a love letter to culture, to the artists and dreamers who carried it, and to the extraordinary power of creativity to outlast even the most turbulent chapters of history.”
The website adds: “Szpilman's music doesn't merely accompany this story; it breathes life into it, binding past to present and reminding us that some things, once made, can never truly be silenced.”
Park Theatre website quotes director Thom Sutherland as saying: “Szpilman's memoir remains a poignant and timely beacon of hope; the purest example of how art and music can transcend difference and literally save lives. I am eager to share this production with audiences but also to cast the spotlight onto Szpilman's compositions which this production features more than 30 of.”
A total of eight performances are planned, from October 15 to November 28. Before its London opening, the production will play a limited run at Mayflower Studios, Southampton, in the first half of September.
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 Polish Radio studio, 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.
Władysław Szpilman. Photo: PAP/Stanisław Dąbrowiecki
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 30 languages.
Szpilman’s extraordinary life was transferred to the silver screen by director Roman Polanski in the Oscar-winning movie The Pianist.
Szpilman died in 2000 at the age of 88.
(mk)