RICHARD ADDINSELL - 'Warsaw Concerto' (From the film 'Dangerous Moonlight', 1941)

"This music is you and me. It's the story of the two of us in Warsaw, of us in America, of us in … where else I don't know. That's why I can't finish it". These lines were spoken by the character Stefan Radecki, a pianist and pilot (Anton Walbrook) to Carol Peters, an American reporter (Sally Gray), in a scene in the 1941 British film Dangerous Moonlight (US release: Suicide Squadron). The film is about the events of 1939/40 in Europe, especially the invasion of Poland and the Battle of Britain, into which is woven a sub-plot of the romance between Stefan and Carol.


But finish it he does. Or rather, Richard Addinsell, a renowned film music composer of the time, finished it. The ‘Warsaw Concerto’ which features heavily in the film although it is never revealed all in one piece, is in the late-Romantic style and sounds a lot like Rachmaninoff - same emotional pull, same soaring melodies, even some of the same structural cues. There’s a reason for that.

They were trying. In fact they were trying very hard to ‘spoof’, if that’s not too unkind a word, Sergei Rachmaninoff, who, let us remember, was still around in 1941. I like to think he would have been flattered though, because Addinsell and his orchestrator, one Roy Douglas, pulled off the feat of producing something really memorable, and of real quality. This is testified to by the fact that it turns up in collections of classical piano pieces, and is also an occasional visitor to the concert hall. Aficionados might point out that it’s ‘not a proper concerto’; it’s intimated in the closing stages of the film that there are three movements, and snatches of dialogue (‘I’ve got the records…’) also suggest a longer work. But Addinsell’s one movement fitted onto two sides of a 12-inch shellac disc, which turned out to be a very big seller indeed.

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The version I have found here dates from 1956, and features Mantovani and his orchestra and in addition, the piano duettists Maryan Rawicz (say Rar-vitch) and Walter Landauer, who were Polish and Austrian respectively. They were on their way to the United States in 1935 hoping to pursue a career there but met with such acclaim in the UK that they decided to remain. ‘Rawicz and Landauer were everywhere when I was young’ said my late father of the two musicians. Furthermore, as sometimes happens with the classical repertoire, the ‘Warsaw Concerto’ was used as a basis for pop records, the versions by the Four Coins in 1958 (as ‘The World Outside’) and a French-language version (as ‘Un Monde Entier’) spring to mind.

And the film? If you get the chance to see it, it’s worth your time. I watched it again this afternoon. Made a lifetime ago now, at a time when the outcome of the war was anyone's guess, it is superbly evocative. The styles, the costumes, the look and feel of everything, and an engaging story even if it is a little confusing at times. But the best part is the music!