Warsaw Concerto

The Warsaw Concerto is a single-movement piano concerto written for the 1941 film Dangerous Moonlight (also known under the later title Suicide Squadron). It was written by British composer Richard Addinsell. The orchestration was by another Briton, Roy Douglas.

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, Anton Walbrook, was an accomplished amateur pianist, so his hands are seen playing in the film, but in fact the music on the soundtrack is played by an uncredited pianist, Louis Kentner.

The film-makers wanted something in the style of Sergei Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini or the Second and Third Piano Concertos, but were unable to persuade Rachmaninoff himself to write a new piece or to afford to obtain the rights for any of these existing pieces.