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 Nazi Germany. 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",[1] or "Denham concertos" (the latter term coined by Steve Race).[2]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference dnn was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Lane, Philip. Notes to 'Warsaw Concerto and Other Piano Concertos from the Movies', Naxos CD 8.554323 (1998)