Warsaw Concert for Piano and Orchestra

RICHARD ADDINSELL's Warsaw Concerto for Piano and Orchestra is just about his only work that is repertoire for the classical stage. The concerto was written as part of the plot of the 1941 Warner Bros. film Dangerous Moonlight (AKA Suicide Squadron). At the center of the narrative is concert pianist Stefan Radetzky, a Polish pianist who refused to leave Poland when the Nazis invaded it during World War II. Persuaded by his friends, he went to the United States, where he continued to perform. However, his successful career and happy personal life did not help him forget the war situation in Poland. He went to Europe to join Poland's "suicide" air squadron. The Warsaw Concerto for Piano and Orchestra is part of the film's narrative - it is a concertо performed by the protagonist Stefan Radetzky. In the film director's imagination, the concerto performed was supposed to be Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No 2 or another in a similar style. He therefore initially turned to Rachmaninoff. It is not clear whether it was for new music to be written by the composer or for the right to perform an episode from the Second Concerto. The composer refused, so the offer was passed to Richard Addinsell. The music is about 8 minutes long and is entirely a compilation of Rachmaninoff's style, with individual moments imitating or literally copying his melodies, harmony, texture and orchestration. Roy Douglas is responsible for the latter, and he not only did that but almost all of Addinsell's orchestrations. The collaboration between the two is explained by the fact that Richard Addinsell was not seriously musically educated. His early education was home-schooled, and he subsequently went to Oxford to study law, but stayed a year and a half. At the age of 21 he decided to take up music and entered the Royal College of Music, but left after only a year. His entry into the field of 'music for performance' and the assistance of Clemence Dane gave him the chance to work on plays and radio broadcasts, gradually 'growing up' to writing music for feature films. He made a breakthrough with the film Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939), but remained recognizable by the Warsaw Concerto from a film that has been all but forgotten. The music has been recorded over 100 times and has sales of over 5 million, despite its collage nature and the credit for its overall appearance not to Addinsell himself but to Roy Douglas.