The Pianist

This new musical from Thom Southerland combines an adaptation of Polish-Jewish pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman’s internationally acclaimed 1946 memoir – which was adapted into Roman Polanski’s Oscar-winning 2002 fim – with Szpilman’s own compositions, which were popular in pre-WWII Warsaw. It sounds like – more so than the movie – Southerland’s Pianist will focus on this happier period in Szpilman’s life, contrasting it with his later hard-fought suvival in the Warsaw ghetto, where he evaded the concentration camps that claimed his whole family thanks to the patronage of a German soldier named Wilm Hosenfeld.