Concierto de varsovia richard addinsell biography

If you’re looking for a piece of music that divides opinion, look no further than this work.

Beloved by many for its Rachmaninov-esque melodies and nostalgic sound-world, it’s also remembered for its repeated occurrence in Spike Milligan’s autobiography as ‘the bloody awful Warsaw Concerto’.

Despite sounding like a full-blooded Romantic piano concerto, the piece was actually composed for the 1941 film Dangerous Moonlight, a World War II love story with a sweeping soundtrack to match the romance of the plot.

The film’s producers apparently had their eyes on Rachmaninov: he, they thought, would be the perfect man to write the score. But if you’re Rachmaninov, you can afford to turn down the odd commission here and there – and so, when the first-choice composer said ‘thanks but no thanks’, the job of penning the music for Dangerous Moonlight fell to Addinsell.

Despite all that, it’s