Warsaw Concerto

The Warsaw Concerto is a short work for piano and orchestra by Richard Addinsell, written for the 1941 British film Dangerous Moonlight, which is about the Polish struggle against the 1939 invasion by the Nazis. In performance it normally lasts just under ten minutes. The concerto is an example of programme music, representing both the struggle for Warsaw and the romance of the leading characters in the film. It became very popular in Britain during World War II.

The concerto is written in imitation of the style of Sergei Rachmaninoff. It initiated a trend for similar short piano concertos in the Romantic style, which have been dubbed "tabloid concertos".

The composer, Richard Addinsell, was born in London and initially studied law before turning to a career in music. His time at the Royal College of Music was brief, as he was soon drawn to musical theatre, and he also wrote for radio, but his most memorable contributions are to a series of film scores beginning in 1936. He wrote the music for the 1939 film Goodbye, Mr. Chips, the original Gaslight (released in 1940, not to be confused with the later Hollywood version), and Dangerous Moonlight (1941, also released in the US as Suicide Squadron). It is this last picture that began the trend of “tabloid concertos,” classical-style compositions written for performance in movies. John Huntley explores the reason behind this concept:

The associations which individual members of the audience may have in relation to a certain piece of well-known music are quite beyond the control of the director of a film in which it is used…. And so with Dangerous Moonlight it was rightly decided to have a piece of music specially written, that could be used to become associated in the mind of the audience with Poland, air raids in Warsaw, and whatever the director wanted to suggest.

The concerto was not part of the original plan. According to Roy Douglas, at that time orchestrator for all of Addinsell's scores: "The film's director had originally wanted to use Sergei Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto, but this idea was either forbidden by the copyright owners or was far too expensive". Thus Addinsell wanted the piece to sound as much like Rachmaninoff as possible, and Douglas remembers, "while I was orchestrating the Warsaw Concerto I had around me the miniature scores of the Second and Third Piano Concertos, as well as the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini." And although it is at the heart of Dangerous Moonlight, the Concerto is never performed complete but rather revealed piecemeal. The opening of the work is heard when the two protagonists meet, and it is further developed when they are on their honeymoon. Finally, in the only extended concert sequence, we are given the closing section. But its use is not restricted to scenes with the "composer" at the piano. The themes are found as underscoring throughout the film, and in this way a brief concert piece gains a dramatic resonance that belies its small scale.

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