The Pianist: The Symphonic Experience

True stories have a way of portraying both the best and worst of humanity, giving us stories of hope emerging from desperate circumstances. Based on the Polish-Jewish pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman’s Holocaust memoir, Roman Polanski’s The Pianist is as much about the transcendental powers of music as it is about the resilience of the human spirit. It’s fitting that Chopin’s wistful yet whimsical nocturnes for piano comprise the majority of the film’s score. The Pianist’s cinematic and historical significance is such that the 2002 Cannes Film Festival awarded it cinema’s highest accolade: the Palme d’Or. The motion picture also received Academy Awards for Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor, Best Director and Best Picture along with BAFTA Awards for Best Film and Best Direction. The film’s original score piece, ‘Moving to the Ghetto Oct. 31, 1940’, composed by Wojciech Kilar, received the prestigious César Award for Best Music Written for a Film.

Set in Warsaw, Poland The Pianist follows the plight of Wladyslaw Szpilman as his family are forced from their home into the overcrowded Warsaw Ghetto and onwards to the Treblinka extermination camp. Szpilman’s musical talent proves to be both his saving grace and eventual undoing as the German soldiers provide him special treatment: he ultimately survives the war, as his family, friends and countrymen perish by his side. Fans of both music and cinema now have a rare opportunity to view this iconic film through a new dimension: alongside a showing of the movie itself, The Pianist: The Symphonic Experience will feature a live performance of the film’s award-winning from a full symphony orchestra, including, of course, a piano.