Sergei Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No. 2

Jessica Duchen enjoys more than a brief encounter with the Russian's much-loved work as she gets on track with the best recordings available

- By Jessica Duchen

The work

Let's get the inevitable out of the way: Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 2 is one of the most popular pieces in history, and it also made David Lean's 1945 Brief Encounter into the movie we know and still (sometimes) love eight decades later, an anniversary that provides an ideal excuse to delve into the music's recorded legacy.

Based on Noël Coward's play, Brief Encounter stars Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard as two ordinary, married, middleclass people who meet at a railway station in a prim English town and fall in love. Their passion and their consciences tussle behind the unassailable façade of propriety and convention. Lean uses Rachmaninov's music to say more about their true feelings than they do themselves. As the opening chords - played on the soundtrack by the Australian pianist Eileen Joyce emerge through the steam of a passing train, it is often the music, more than the images, that captures our hearts.