two halves culturally as well as politically" after the war. His father "shaped the Polish popular music scene over several decades—but the western frontier of Poland constituted a barrier" to music from the Eastern bloc countries. (Andrzej Szpilman's "Foreword" to the 1999 edition of The Pianist, p. 8) Szpilman's compositions include the suite for piano "Life of the Machines" 1932, Violin Concerto 1933, "Waltzer in the Olden Style" 1937, film soundtracks: "Świt, dzień i noc Palestyny" (1934), Wrzos (1938) and Doctor Murek (1939), Concertino for Piano and Orchestra (1940), Paraphrase on Own Themes (1948) "Ouverture for Symphonic Orchestra" (1968) and many very popular songs in Poland. His works are now published in printed editions by Boosey & Hawkes/Bote & Bock Music Publishers in New York, Berlin and London. In 1961, he initiated and organized Sopot International Song Festival produced in Poland every summer, now for more than 50 years. He founded the Polish Union of Authors of Popular Music. The book The Death of a City (original "Śmierć miasta") was written by Wladyslaw Szpilman and elaborated by Jerzy Waldorff shortly after the war ended, and first printed in 1946 by publishing house Wiedza, The book was censored by Stalinist authorities for political reasons. For example, the nationality of benevolent German officer Wilm Hosenfeld was changed to Austrian. As the East German dissident singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann observed in his epilogue for the 1999 English-language edition: "Directly after the war it was impossible to publish a book in Poland which presented a German officer as a brave and helpful man," and an Austrian hero would be "not quite so bad." Biermann added caustically, "In the years of the Cold War Austria and East Germany were linked by a common piece of hypocrisy: both pretended to have been forcibly occupied by Hitler's Germany." In 1998, Szpilman's son Andrzej published new extended edition of his father's memoir, first in German translation from Karin Wolff as Das wunderbare Überleben (The Miraculous Survival) by a German publishing house Ullstein Verlag; and then in English translation by Anthea Bell as The Pianist with Epilogue by Wolf Biermann. In March 1999 Władysław Szpilman visited London for Jewish Book Week, where he met English readers to mark the publication of the book in Great Britain. It was later published in more than 35 languages, named Best book of the year by Los Angeles Times, Sunday Times, Boston Globe, The