A pair of war-horses
surround the perhaps less standard fare of Franck’s variations,
until one realises that it’s only a certain generation who
would describe Addinsell’s Warsaw concerto that way. Hugely popular it was, during and
after the war, but it has dropped out of fashion to a large
extent and nowadays is probably heard in the cinema rather
than the concert hall. Addinsell was a master of film music
and has an extensive list of screen music to his credit such
as Goodbye Mr Chips, Blithe Spirit, Scrooge,
and Tom Brown’s Schooldays, spanning the war years
and beyond from 1939 to 1951. It is, however, the music for
Dangerous Moonlight, a wartime film starring Anton
Walbrook as a Polish pianist and airman, for which Addinsell
will be remembered. Incidentally Walbrook was himself a good
pianist and his hands accurately mimed those of actual pianist
Louis Kentner. It appealed to what might be called middlebrow
taste with its striking resemblance to Rachmaninov’s second
piano concerto also all the rage at the time. At under nine
minutes and in one movement only, it is more Rhapsody than
Concerto but it fitted conveniently on to a double-sided 78rpm
and sold like hot cakes. It’s heavily romantic, technically
brilliant and tuneful from start to finish, and generally
placed on a level with the Tchaikovsky and Grieg concertos.
This was a heyday for British film music. Walton, Vaughan
Williams, Britten and Bax were hard at it and successfully
so, but Addinsell’s concerto was a unique triumph. It’s still
worth hearing, but whether it can be programmed by persuading
a pianist to come back after a work of more traditional length
and perform it in a concert is a tough ask.
While
Franck’s Variations and the Grieg Concerto receive stylish
if routine performances at the hands of technically assured
Gabriel Tacchino (who recorded all the Saint-Saëns concertos
in the 1970s), the tempi of the second and third movements
of the Grieg are initially unaccountably sluggish under Armin
Jordan. Total time of 54 minutes for the disc may be somewhat
mean on the part of Apex, nevertheless the disc is worth buying
for Addinsell’s tried and tested war-horse alone.
Christopher Fifield
