Memorabilia of Władysław Szpilman, ‘The Pianist’, to be sold at auction

A wide range of personal items belonging to Władysław Szpilman, the famous Polish pianist and composer of Jewish origin whose war-time plight was made by Roman Polanski into the Oscar-winning film ‘The Pianist’, are to be auctioned in Warsaw on September 22. 

Image by Steve Buissinne from Pixabay

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As of Friday, they can be viewed by the public at the Desa Unicum auction house in the capital.

The most important item in the collection is a Steinway grand piano from 1937 on which Szpilman wrote his most popular pieces.

Other items include a pen and a pocket watch which are his only personal belongings that survived the Warsaw Ghetto; and the score of the suite The Life of Machines, which survived thanks to the fact that it had been sent abroad before the war.

There is also a metronome, the pianist’s tobacco pipes, a travel chess set, cufflinks and bow ties used during concerts, paintings, as well as photographs of such great musicians as Arthur Rubinstein, featuring personal dedications to Szpilman.

Władysław Szpilman (1911-2000). Photo: [Public domain]

Born in 1911, Szpilman studied the piano 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.

Szpilman miraculously avoided capture by the Nazis. 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 a German army officer. After the war, he served as director of Polish Radio’s music department for 18 years.

Szpilman then founded the Warsaw Piano Quintet, which toured around the world for more than two decades. His compositional output includes some 500 songs, many of which became hits, and several symphonic works which have remained in the concert repertoire until today.

He died in 2000 at the age of 88.

(mk/pk)