Warsaw Concerto

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The Warsaw Concerto is a piano concerto written by British composer Richard Addinsell for the 1941 film, Dangerous Moonlight (also known under the later re-title Suicide Squadron). While Addinsell created the melodic motives, the fine orchestration was by Roy Douglas, whose contribution is rarely acknowledged.

The film's love-story plot revolves around the fictional composer of the piece, a piano virtuoso and "shell-shocked" combat pilot, who is a refugee in England from the World War II occupation of Poland and considers returning to Poland to rejoin the war. The actor was a would-be pianist, so his hands are seen playing in the film, but in fact the music on the soundtrack is played by an uncredited musician, Louis Kentner.

The theme of the concerto is also borrowed in a popular-music love song whose lyrics include "The world outside will never know...".

The film-makers wanted something in the style of Sergei Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and Second and Third Piano Concertos, but were unable to persuade Rachmaninoff himself to write a piece.

Spike Milligan repeatedly refers to the piece in his autobiography Adolf Hitler: My Part in his Downfall as 'the bloody awful Warsaw Concerto'.