Wladyslaw Szpilman was born in 1911 in Sosnowiec. On leaving school, he went to Warsaw to study music (piano) in the Chopin School of Music, under Professor Jozef Smidowicz, and later, under Professor Aleksander Michalowski (both scholars of Franz List). In 1931 he went to Berlin to the Academy of Music studying under Professor Leonid Kreutzer and Arthur Schnabel (piano) and Professor Franz Schrecker (compositio n). At this time he wrote his Violin Concerto, Piano Suite "Zycie Maszyn" (The Life of Machines), Concertino for piano with Orchestra, many works for piano and viol in and also some songs. In 1935 Szpilman entered the Polish Radio, where, except during the war, he has worked until 1963. In 1946 he published his book "Death of a City"- memories from 1939 to 1945. Since 1945 Szpilman has appeared in concerts as a soloist and with chamber groups in Poland, throughout Europe and in America. He and Bronislav Gimpel have formed a very successful piano duet (since 1932), which grew in 1962 to 3the Warsaw Piano Quintet 3, that performed about 2500 conc erts until 1987 in whole world with exception of Australia. Since 1936 he started also his career as a composer of songs (about 500). About 150 of them were in a pop-charts of Poland and they are until today "evergreen's " of a polish popmusic culture. In the 50`s he wrote also about 40 songs for children, for which he received in 1955 the award of the Polish Composers Union. He wrote also many orchestral pieces (Ballet, Small Overture a.o.),musicals,music for children theater and a music for about 50 children radio broadcast, as well as film music 1937- "Wrzos", 1939 - "Dr. Murek", 1950- "Pokoj Zwyciezy Swiat", 1957- "Call My Wife" a.o. In 1961 he initiated and organized International Songs Festival in Sopot - Poland aslso founded Polish Union of Authors of Popular Music. Since 1964 he was member of Presidium of Polish Composers Union, and ZAIKS (Polish ASCAP). In April 1998 his book "Death of the city" will be published by a main German publisher the ECON Verlag with commentar of a famous German writer and poet - Wolf Biermann