The piece that he was forced to stop playing was the Nocturne in C sharp minor. Polish Radio went silent for more than five years. When it resumed operations at the beginning of 1945, Szpilman made a symbolic gesture of opening his piano recital broadcast by the station with the same piece – Chopin’s Nocturne in C sharp minor.
Szpilman described the September 23, 1939 radio recital in his memoirs. He wrote:
Frankly, I cannot remember how I made it to the radio station. I ran from one gate to another, hid for a while and ran further, dodging the bombs. At the door to the studio, I bumped into Mayor [of Warsaw] Starzyński. He looked disheveled and utterly exhausted. He hadn't slept for days, being the soul of the defense and the hero of the city. He carried the burden of the fate of Warsaw on his shoulders [...] As long as the Mayor was there for us, nobody was losing hope. […] That day I was supposed to play Chopin. As it turned out later, it was the last live music broadcast on Polish Radio. Bombs kept falling in the immediate vicinity of the studio, the neighbouring houses were on fire. I could hardly hear the sound of my own piano in the deafening roar.
Szpilman, who was a Polish Jew, 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 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 30 languages.
Szpilman’s extraordinary life was transferred to the silver screen by director Roman Polanski in the Oscar-awarded movie The Pianist.
Szpilman died in 2000 at the age of 88.
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