Richard Addinsell was born in Oxford, England, on January 13, 1904.
After studying law at Oxford, he attended the Royal College of Music in
London and completed his music study in Berlin and Vienna between 1929
and 1932. In 1933 he visited the United States, where he wrote music for
several Hollywood films and for a New York stage production of _Alice in
Wonderland_. He has since made a specialty of writing music for the
screen, his best efforts being the scores for _Goodbye, Mr. Chips_,
_Blithe Spirit_, _Dangerous Moonlight_, _Dark Journey_, and _Fire Over
England_. During World War II he wrote music for several documentary
films, including _Siege of Tobruk_ and _We Sail at Midnight_.
Addinsell’s most frequently played composition is the _Warsaw Concerto_,
for piano and orchestra. He wrote it for the English movie _Dangerous
Moonlight_ (renamed in the United States _Suicide Squadron_). Anton
Walbrook here plays the part of a renowned concert pianist who becomes
an officer in the Polish air force during World War II and loses his
memory after a crash. The _Warsaw Concerto_, basic to the plot
structure, recurs several times in the film. It first became popular,
however, on records, and after that with “pop” and salon orchestras.
Though the composer’s indebtedness to Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano
Concerto is pronounced, the _Warsaw Concerto_ has enough of its own
individuality and charm to survive. Structurally, it is not a concerto
but a rhapsody. It opens with several massive chords, arpeggios, and
scale passages in the piano. This dramatic opening leads to the
sensitive and romantic principal melody, heard in the strings. Later on
there appears a second lyric thought, but the rhapsodic character
remains predominant. The composition ends with a final statement of the
opening phrase of the first main melody.
Addinsell is also sometimes represented on semi-classical programs with
a light-textured and tuneful composition called _Prelude and Waltz_, for
orchestra. This also stems from a motion picture, in this case the
British screen adaptation of Noel Coward’s _Blithe Spirit_.