This post is either slightly off topic, or as on topic as any post can be.
You will have to read the book The Pianist by Wladyslaw Szpilman to find
out.  (ISBN 0-312-26376-7) It is a short, true memoir by a Polish Jew who
manages to survive WW II while hiding in the Warsaw ghetto.  I do not want
to give away the end --which is truly shocking even though we know from the
start that Szpilman survives the war.  The fact that he is a pianist plays
a small but critical role in his story.  Suffice it to say that after
reading this book you will never again hear Chopin's Nocturne in c sharp
minor the same way.

It is a compulsively readable book though, of course, the subject matter is
very difficult to bear.  The saving and healing powers of music have seldom
been so vividly depicted.  I urge everyone to read it.

Ed Zubrow <[log in to unmask]>