In the early 1930s, Władysław Szpilman, a young Jewish musician, studied piano at prestigious institutions in Warsaw and Berlin. Then Hitler came to power. In his acclaimed memoir, The Pianist, first published in 1946, Szpilman details the horrors of the Weimar-era and his attempts to make music while living under Nazi rule. After the Nazis invaded Poland, Szpilman played piano for Polish radio (bombed by the Germans in 1939) and found jobs playing piano in Warsaw Ghetto cafés. Standing in line with his family to board a train headed for a death camp, a friend helped him escape. Szpilman hid in an apartment where he watched the 1944 Warsaw Uprising from a window. Eventually living in bombed-out buildings, wearing rags, he found an ally in Wilm Hosenfeld, a German officer whom he’d impressed with a rendition of Chopin. In 2002, two years after Szpilman’s death, his remarkable story was turned into an Oscar-winning film. Now the memoir has been adapted for the stage. The play features an original score by the Dutch concert pianist Iris Hond. —Jensen Davis