From his early Berlin years, Szpilman never gave up the will to write music, even when living in the Warsaw Ghetto. His compositions include orchestral works, concertos, piano pieces, but also significant amounts of music for radio plays and films, as well as around 500 songs. More than 100 of these are very well known as hits and evergreens in Poland. In the 1950s, he wrote about 40 songs for children, for which he received an award from the Polish Composers Union in 1955.