Pianist Krystian Zimerman stands as one of the most sensitive and exacting pianists to have emerged in the latter part of the 20th century. The possessor of an exclusive lifetime contract with the Deutsche Grammophon label, he has a large repertory running from Beethoven to Witold Lutosławski.

Zimerman was born in Zabrze, Poland, on December 5, 1956. His father was a pianist who gave his son extensive lessons; Zimerman was already giving concerts as a boy. He attended the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice, studying with Andrzej Jasinski. Zimerman's breakthrough came in 1975, with a win at the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw. The following year, he performed with the Berlin Philharmonic under conductor Herbert Blomstedt, and he made his debut with the New York Philharmonic in 1979. Zimerman was signed to Deutsche Grammophon shortly after arriving on the scene, and he issued his first LP album, a collection of Chopin works, for that label in 1977. An unusual feature of Zimerman's early career was that, in addition to performing, he pursued training as a piano builder. He has always insisted on performing on his own Steinway pianos, to which he has occasionally made modifications according to the repertory. This has limited Zimerman's touring to a degree; two of his pianos were badly damaged by personnel at New York's Kennedy Airport, and he has refused to perform in the U.S., a country of whose foreign policy he has also been critical. However, he has collaborated with many of the world's leading conductors, including Daniel Barenboim, Leonard Bernstein (whom he especially admired, although their styles were quite different), and Simon Rattle. Zimerman created a Polish Festival Orchestra to mark the 150th anniversary of Chopin's death in 1999, and he has been known for his innovative interpretations of the music of that composer. He has a large repertory of Romantic and early 20th century piano works, and he also sometimes plays contemporary music; he was the dedicatee of Witold Lutosławski's Piano Concerto (1988) and gave its world premiere at the Salzburg Festival.

Zimerman has made more than 40 recordings. He recorded very little between the late 1990s and the late 2010s, although gaps in the marketplace were filled in by enthusiastically received reissues. Zimerman returned to recording in 2017 with an album of Schubert sonatas. In 2021, he released his second cycle of Beethoven's piano concertos, joining the London Symphony Orchestra in a socially distanced recording on which he replaced the keyboard of his Steinway for each piece. ~ James Manheim

Frédéric Chopin was the most famous composer of Polish origin in the history of Western concert music. He was a progressive who revolutionized the harmonic content, the texture, and the emotional quality of the small piano piece, turning light dance forms, nocturnes, and study genres into profound works that were both daring and deeply inward.

Born Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin to a French father and a Polish mother, probably on March 1, 1810, he was a native of Zelazowa Wola village west of Warsaw. In these rustic surroundings, he was exposed to both the classics of keyboard music (including, significantly, those of Bach), by teachers who immediately recognized him as a prodigy, and to Polish folk music, which would be reflected in a pioneering musical nationalism. He quickly outstripped the talents of most of Warsaw's top piano and composition teachers, and when he graduated from the Main School of Music in 1829, professor Józef Elsner pronounced him a genius. That year, Chopin set out on a tour of Austria, Germany, and France. During this period, he wrote his two piano concertos, which contain much of the typical brilliant style of virtuoso piano music of the era, but show the development of a gift for distinctive melody, both ornate and emotionally deep. Chopin returned to Warsaw but departed again, first for Vienna, where he heard news that Poland's uprising against its Russian, Prussian, and Austrian rulers had failed. The Polish national spirit would pervade some of his larger works, including the so-called "Revolutionary" Etude (the Etude in C minor, Op. 10, No. 12). He was encouraged by composer Robert Schumann, who reviewed his Variations, Op. 2, with the words "Hats off, gentlemen, a genius!"

In 1832, Chopin headed for Paris, in many ways the center of European cultural life, and dazzled the city's musical elite, including Franz Liszt, in a concert at the Salle Pleyel. He immediately found himself in demand as a piano teacher, and soon he decided to settle in Paris, although he always hoped to return to Poland. He performed at aristocratic salons, cultivating then-new genres such as the étude (the word means "study," but in Chopin's hands it became much more), the nocturne, the waltz, and, in a Polish vein, the mazurka and the polonaise. After a planned marriage to a Polish girl, Maria Wodzinska, fell through, Chopin met writer Aurore Dudevant, who used the pen name George Sand. The pair began a torrid affair (Sand was married) and traveled together in 1838 to Mallorca, Spain, where they found the local citizenry disapproving of their unconventional relationship and were forced to lodge in a disused monastery. Chopin's creativity was fired, and he would write brilliantly innovative sets of piano music over the next few years. However, the weather turned cold in the winter of 1838-1839, and Chopin's health worsened as he and Sand lived in the unheated building; he was probably already suffering from tuberculosis. Back in France, Chopin and Sand took up residence in Paris and in summers at her estate in Nohant, where Chopin composed prolifically and the couple hosted painter Eugène Delacroix and other members of the cream of French artistic society. The romance cooled, though, and finally ended in 1847. One factor precipitating the breakup was Sand's negative portrayal of Chopin in her 1846 novel Lucrezia Floriani.

Chopin's health was also worsening badly; he found it difficult to perform and could no longer attract crowds as a virtuoso. During political unrest in Paris in 1848, Chopin fled to the British Isles. He performed in London (once for Queen Victoria and Prince Albert) and in Glasgow, where he was the subject of romantic interest from Scots noblewoman Jane Stirling. Chopin, however, remarked that he was "closer to the grave than the nuptial bed," and indeed in November of 1848 he gave what would be his last concert, for Polish refugees. He returned to Paris and continued to receive a steady stream of admirers despite what was clearly a terminal illness; singer Pauline Viardot, according to historians Kornel Michałowski and Jim Samson, remarked that "all the grand Parisian ladies considered it de rigueur to faint in his room." Chopin died in Paris on October 17, 1849. ~ James Manheim