Andrzej Wasowski

Andrzej Wasowski (January 24, 1919 in Ukraine – May 27, 1993 in Washington DC) was a Polish classical pianist.

Andrzej Wasowski was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1924. His father's family owned estates in Podolia and sugar refineries and mining interests in Silesia. His mother, Princess Maria Glinska Wasowska was Professor of Piano at the Warsaw Conservatory. She, in her turn, had studied piano with Richard Baumeister, a pupil of Franz Liszt.

Andrzej began his piano studies with his mother at the age of four. In 1931 he was admitted to the Warsaw Conservatory where he studied with Margerita Trombini-Kazuro, who had studied with one of Liszt's disciples, Giovanni Sgambati. He graduated from the conservatory in 1939 with one of its highest awards, the Grand Prix d'Interpretation.

Lwow, where he was living, was overrun by the Russian army in 1939. On hearing him play, they packed him off to give concerts in the Soviet Union where he performed 186 times, giving up to nine concerts in a three-day period. While in the Soviet Union, he studied with Konstantin Igumnov in Moscow.

He returned to his native city just before the Germans captured it. He was permitted to give concerts to benefit war relief organisations, but was not permitted to play Polish music. Since the Nazis forbade performance of Polish music, Wasowski played clandestinely in basements for handfuls of Poles who risked their lives to hear Chopin. When he refused to play concerts for the Nazis, he was put to work in a slave battalion.

After the Second World War, all of his family's possessions were seized by the communists, and the 22-year-old Wasowski became a stateless refugee. He was the winner of the 1951 Marguerite Long International Piano Competition in Paris and the 1952 International Competition in Bolzano. In 1956 he married Countess Maria Grocholska He toured extensively in Europe, North and South America, and became a Venezuelan citizen.

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