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Tag: Warsaw Concerto

Movie Concertos Beyond the Warsaw Concerto

The craze for the romantic movie concerto likely achieved its delirious apotheosis with the “Warsaw Concerto” from the film “Dangerous Moonlight,” a 1941 potboiler about a fictional pianist who escapes Nazi-occupied Poland, enlists in the RAF and, while suffering from amnesia, attains glory as a fighter pilot during the Battle of Britain.

Richard Addinsell’s showstopper (arranged by Roy Douglas and performed on the soundtrack by Louis Kentner) is said to have yielded over 100 recordings. It certainly spawned numerous imitators.

This week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll hear five other movie concertos, including three for piano, one for cello, and a virtuosic showpiece for violin and orchestra.

Tune in for the “Cornish Rhapsody” from “Love Story” (1944) by Hubert Bath; “Symphonie Moderne” from “Four Wives” (1939) by Max Steiner; and the “Concerto Macabre” from “Hangover Square” (1945) by Bernard Herrmann; also the Cello Concerto in C from “Deception” (1946) by Erich Wolfgang Korngold and the “Carmen Fantasy” for violin and orchestra from “Humoresque” (1946) by Franz Waxman.

Enjoy these concerted efforts for the silver screen, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT

Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

Bait-and-switch trailer for “Deception”

PHOTO: Laird Cregar burning down the house in “Hangover Square”

March 28, 2025
Louis Kentner Warsaw Concerto Star

When he was hired to play the piano in a World War II potboiler, he asked that he not receive credit, for fear that it would damage his integrity as a concert artist. But when the spin-off record sold millions, he wisely changed his tune.

Today is the birthday of Louis Kentner (1905-1987). The pianist went by several names. He was born Lajos Kentner to Hungarian parents in the present-day Czech Republic (then Austrian Silesia). Among his teachers at the Royal Academy of Music in Budapest were Arnold Székely (piano), Leó Weiner (chamber music) and Zoltán Kodály (composition). He began performing in public at the age of 15. Until 1931, he was known professionally as Ludwig Kentner. He settled in England in 1935 and became a naturalized citizen in 1946.

Kentner excelled in the works of Franz Liszt. He founded the British Liszt Society. The sprawling “Years of Pilgrimage” was among the works he tackled complete. He also gave radio broadcasts of the complete sonatas of Beethoven and Schubert, and Bach’s “The Well-Tempered Clavier.” He was the pianist of choice for Béla Bartók, who requested him as soloist for the Hungarian premiere of his Piano Concerto No. 2 and the first European performance of the Concerto No. 3. Later, Kentner gave the British premiere of Bartók’s Scherzo for Piano and Orchestra.

Also in England, he gave first performances of works by Sir Arthur Bliss, Sir Michael Tippett, and Sir William Walton (Walton’s Violin Sonata, played with his brother-in-law, the violinist Yehudi Menuhin).

Nothing he played, however, touched so many as Richard Addinsell’s “Warsaw Concerto,” which became world-famous following its use in the 1941 film “Dangerous Moonlight” (known in the U.S. by the more lurid title, “Suicide Squadron”). The piece, never heard complete in the film, took on a life of its own when arranged as a mini Rachmaninoff-style concerto by Addinsell’s frequent collaborator, Roy Douglas. The eight-minute playing time ensured that it would fit perfectly on two sides of a 78 rpm disc. Its sheet music sales went through the roof, and the “Warsaw Concerto” was a smash. It was not the first spin-off concerto from the movies, but it did spark an unlikely rage for concertos at the movies.

Kentner’s legacy has been tied very closely to my own radio work, since it is he who performs the theme to my weekly show, “The Lost Chord” (which is, for the record, the “Berceuse” from Kentner’s 1972 recording of the “Transcendental Etudes” of Sergei Lyapunov).

So it is with gratitude, as well as with admiration, that I offer this remembrance of Louis Kentner on his birthday!

Kentner’s recording of the “Warsaw Concerto”

“Berceuse” from Lyapunov’s “Transcendental Etudes” (theme music for “The Lost Chord”)

Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 3

Video of Kentner performing Liszt’s “Years of Pilgrimage (Second Year: Italy)” complete

July 19, 2023
Movie Concertos: Beyond the Warsaw Concerto

The craze for the romantic movie concerto likely achieved its delirious apotheosis with the “Warsaw Concerto” from the film “Dangerous Moonlight,” a 1941 potboiler about a fictional pianist who escapes Nazi-occupied Poland, enlists in the RAF and, while suffering from amnesia, attains glory as a fighter pilot during the Battle of Britain.

Richard Addinsell’s showstopper (arranged by Roy Douglas and performed on the soundtrack by Louis Kentner) is said to have yielded over 100 recordings. It certainly spawned numerous imitators.

This week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll hear five other movie concertos, including three for piano, one for cello, and a virtuosic showpiece for violin and orchestra.

Tune in for the “Cornish Rhapsody” from “Love Story” (1944) by Hubert Bath; “Symphonie Moderne” from “Four Wives” (1939) by Max Steiner; and the “Concerto Macabre” from “Hangover Square” (1945) by Bernard Herrmann; also the Cello Concerto in C from “Deception” (1946) by Erich Wolfgang Korngold and the “Carmen Fantasy” for violin and orchestra from “Humoresque” (1946) by Franz Waxman.

Enjoy these concerted efforts for the silver screen, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, this Saturday evening at 6:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Bait-and-switch trailer for “Deception”

Laird Cregar burning down the house in “Hangover Square”

February 25, 2023
Louis Kentner Warsaw Concerto Fame

When he was hired to play the piano in a World War II potboiler, he asked that he not receive credit, for fear that it would damage his integrity as a concert artist. But when the spin-off record sold millions, he wisely changed his tune.

Today is the birthday of Louis Kentner (1905-1987). The pianist went by several names. He was born Lajos Kentner to Hungarian parents in the present-day Czech Republic (then Austrian Silesia). Among his teachers at the Royal Academy of Music in Budapest were Arnold Székely (piano), Leó Weiner (chamber music) and Zoltán Kodály (composition). He began performing in public at the age of 15. Until 1931, he was known professionally as Ludwig Kentner. He settled in England in 1935 and became a naturalized citizen in 1946.

Kentner excelled in the works of Franz Liszt. He founded the British Liszt Society. The sprawling “Years of Pilgrimage” was among the works he tackled complete. He also gave radio broadcasts of the complete sonatas of Beethoven and Schubert, and Bach’s “The Well-Tempered Clavier.” He was the pianist of choice for Béla Bartók, who requested him as soloist for the Hungarian premiere of his Piano Concerto No. 2 and the first European performance of the Concerto No. 3. Later, Kentner gave the British premiere of Bartók’s Scherzo for Piano and Orchestra.

Also in England, he gave first performances of works by Sir Arthur Bliss, Sir Michael Tippett, and Sir William Walton (Walton’s Violin Sonata, played with his brother-in-law, the violinist Yehudi Menuhin).

Nothing he played, however, touched so many as Richard Addinsell’s “Warsaw Concerto,” which became world-famous following its use in the 1941 film “Dangerous Moonlight” (known in the U.S. by the more lurid title, “Suicide Squadron”). The piece, never heard complete in the film, took on a life of its own when arranged as a mini Rachmaninoff-style concerto by Addinsell’s frequent collaborator, Roy Douglas. The eight-minute playing time ensured that it would fit perfectly on two sides of a 78 rpm disc. Its sheet music sales went through the roof, and the “Warsaw Concerto” was a smash. It was not the first spin-off concerto from the movies, but it did spark an unlikely rage for concertos at the movies.

Kentner’s legacy has been tied very closely to my own radio work, since it is he who performs the theme to my weekly show, “The Lost Chord” (which is, for the record, the “Berceuse” from Kentner’s 1972 recording of the “Transcendental Etudes” of Sergei Lyapunov).

So it is with gratitude, as well as with admiration, that I offer this remembrance of Louis Kentner on his birthday!

Kentner’s recording of the “Warsaw Concerto:”

His first of three recordings of the “Berceuse” from Lyapunov’s “Transcendental Etudes” (this one made in 1939):

July 19, 2018
Warsaw Concerto and the Rage for Cinematic Concerti

Yesterday, Richard Addinsell’s birthday, I wrote about the “Warsaw Concerto,” which was introduced in the English film “Dangerous Moonlight” (released in the U.S. as “Suicide Squadron”). The mini Rachmaninoff-style concerto went on to sell millions. I want to live in a world where a piano concerto can attain Platinum status!

As I mentioned, the work’s success sparked an unlikely rage for cinematic concerti. There followed the “Cornish Rhapsody” by Hubert Bath, from the film “Love Story” (1944), the “Dream of Olwen” by Charles Williams, from “While I Live” (1947), and most successfully, the “Spellbound Concerto,” from the Alfred Hitchcock classic (1945), actually arranged into a concerto after the fact, by Miklós Rózsa.

Other Hollywood productions, such as “The Enchanted Cottage” (1945), with music by Roy Webb, flirted with the concept, with blind pianist Herbert Marshall’s “tone poem” played throughout the film, but whether or not there was ever a commercial recording, I don’t know.

David Lean’s “Brief Encounter” (1945) went whole hog and simply used Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2, which is interesting since Addinsell’s orchestrator, Roy Douglas, claimed the reason for creating the “Warsaw Concerto” in the first place was because either the Rachmaninoff’s use was forbidden by the copyright holders or that it was simply too expensive.

“Dangerous Moonlight” tells the tale of a Polish pianist and composer who becomes a fighter pilot during World War II. He is discovered by an American reporter while practicing one of his compositions in a bombed-out building, and their love story commences. The title refers not only to the romantic influence of the moon, but also the more palpable threat of nighttime bombing raids.

By the way, Douglas who whipped Addinsell’s sketches into the concerto’s final form, worked for years as an assistant to Ralph Vaughan Williams and Sir William Walton. He is still listed as a vice president of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society. Probably best known for his ballet “Les Sylphides,” he was born on December 12, 1907 – which means, as of last month, he is 107 years old!

Here’s Miklós Rózsa’s “Spellbound Concerto,” in its superior version for two pianos and orchestra, with ondes Martenot (in lieu of theremin), arranged by the composer to twice its former length:

PHOTO: The dangerous moonlight pales beside the hazard of secondhand smoke

January 14, 2015

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