Warsaw Concerto and Other Piano Concertos from the Movies

"Philip Fowke plays all the pieces with affection and panache"
- Gramophone

With the possible exception of the violin, the piano would seem to have the most demonstrative voice for the film composer faced with the sizzling emotional temperature of high drama, for as many of the following pieces suggest, the problems of amnesia, enabling him to convey both romantic flair and subtle character nuance through the broad canvas of the instrument's sonorities.

The solo piano was often the only accompaniment to film in the cinema's infancy and 'silent' days but with the advent of sound it was not long before the piano found a more concertante rôle in soundtrack music. John Huntley, in his book British Film Music, cites the use of the piano in a minor melodrama. The Case of the Frightened Lady, as a milestone in this field. It never really has a concerto rôle but it started something that has gone on through changes in style and fashion right up to the present day, and Michael Nyman's The Piano.

The first real 'Denham Concerto' as these hybrids were soon dubbed, after Korda's studio where many were made, came with the Warsaw Concerto in 1940, although there were hints four years earlier when the Polish virtuoso Paderewski made a film there called Moonlight Sonata which was little more than a filmed concert. Many similar works followed, some heard on this disc, and where the opportunity for an original work was not given, then the classical concertos were suitably plundered -Tchaikovsky's No. 1 for The Great Lie (1941) and The Common Touch (1941), Rachmaninov No. 2 for Brief Encounter (1945) and even Mozart No. 21 for Elvira Madigau (1967).