Heard It in an Ad · Story 4
1975 · American pop song
The Rachmaninoff hiding in "All by Myself"
If the melody of a 1975 pop hit sounds strangely familiar, you are not imagining it.
The piece in this story
"All by Myself" became even better known when Céline Dion recorded it in 1996. If you ever heard it and thought it sounded a bit classical, your ears were right.
Where you heard it
The original came out in 1975, sung by the American singer Eric Carmen, who took the melody of the verses from the second movement of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2. Carmen believed the music was out of copyright, but it was still protected in the United States, and in the end he shared part of the earnings with the Rachmaninoff estate.
The real story
After his First Symphony was savaged at its premiere in 1897, Rachmaninoff struggled to compose for a long time. This concerto marked his recovery. He was the soloist when it was first performed in Moscow in 1901, and he dedicated it to Nikolai Dahl, the physician who had treated him. The 1945 British film Brief Encounter used the concerto throughout.
Tell a friend
"All by Myself" borrows the tune of its verses from the slow movement of the concerto Rachmaninoff wrote after climbing out of a long slump.
Sergei Rachmaninoff1873–1943Read the story of Rachmaninoff →