Since the Nazis forbade performance of Polish music, Wasowski played clandestinely in basements for handfuls of Poles who risked their lives to hear Chopin.
On January 7, 1981, Wasowski played Chopin's complete mazurkas in Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall.
[citation needed] During the 1950's Wasowski made three recordings with the clarinetist Antoine-Pierre de Bavier for Deutsche Grammophon, including works by Johannes Brahms, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Albert Roussel and Carl Maria von Weber.
In 1954, with the addition of Walter Müller on viola, a fourth record featuring works by Schumann, Weber, Debussy, Ravel, Ferruccio Busoni and Roussel was released.
Disques Alpha, a Belgian classical music label, also released two Wasowski records of Frédéric Chopin works in the 1950's.
Bernard Sherman, reviewing the mazurkas for the New York Times[3] described Wasowski as "one of those artists the broad international public neglects but critics and colleagues rave about".
Another critic, Charles Michener[4] praised the Mazurkas as "full-blooded and intoxicating, almost shocking in their use of rubato, the freedom with which they shake the pieces' rhythmic structures".
The recording received the 1997 Critics Choice Award from National Public Radio, and the critic Jessica Duchen writing in BBC Music Magazine (May 1997) said "These performances of the Chopin Nocturnes, recorded in 1989, are really rather extraordinary ... a glorious singing tone of great clarity, eloquence and purity, with beautifully balanced accompaniment and inner voices ... they moved me to tears".
Being familiar with the dances themselves, his readings are informed by the rhythmic conventions of Polish music, resulting in interpretations that differ markedly from the literal notation, but which are perhaps more in keeping with Chopin's own performance (see an extensive discussion in Sherman's review in the external links section).