Paweł Lewiecki

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May  8, 1896 in Nalczyk - August 21, 1974 in Warsaw

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Polish pianist and music educator. Lewiecki had piano lessons from the age of four. He attended the music school in Chişinău and studied from 1914 at the Moscow Conservatory with Konstantin Igumnov and Alexander Scriabin. In his diploma recital he played Sergei Rachmaninoff's  concerto in F sharp minor. He was drafted into the Tsarist army in 1917 and fought against the Bolshevik soldiers. He managed to escape to Paris via Bessarabia and Turkey. Here he received new papers, which allowed him to return to Poland. There he debuted in 1920 with three concerts in Biała Podlaska. This was followed by performances in Warsaw and other Polish cities, in Czechoslovakia and France, where he played works by Polish composers such as Ignacy Jan Paderewski , Ludomir Różycki , Antoni Szałowski , Tadeusz Szeligowski , Roman Maciejewski , Karol Szymanowski , Feliks Łabuński , Adam Sołtys , Roman Statkowski and Ignacy Friedman. As a vocal accompanist he joined u. a. with Aniela Szlemińska.

From 1924 to 1939 he also directed the piano department at the Warsaw Conservatory.

In November 1939 he was arrested by the Gestapo, but was released on the intervention of Cardinal Adam Stefan Sapieha in March 1940.  During the occupation of Poland by the Germans, he gave secret concerts of Polish music, gave piano lessons at the Conservatory (operating under the name Staatliche Musikschule in Warschau) and privately.

After the war, he continued his career as a pianist. From 1945 to 1949 he taught a piano class at the College of Music, then he held a professorship at the State Conservatory in Warsaw. Among his pupils were Jadwiga Szamotulska, Wanda Łosakiewicz, Janina Garztecka, Józef Kański, Janusz Mechanisz, Wanda Lehrówna, Ken Sasaki, Michał Wesołowski, Bogusław Kaczyński, Zofia Krywult, Jadwiga Waśniewska and Andrzej Płonczyński .