Fran Magazine: Issue #16

Classical Music Hour returns! Again!

You’re reading Fran Magazine, a Substack by and for Fran Hoepfner and all her little associates. This is an issue for paid subscribers, which means it’s about something esoteric you won’t be able to bring up at parties to acquire social clout. Consider gifting a subscription to someone you know who doesn’t go to parties in the first place.

Classical music fun fact

Here’s a good story. A few weeks ago, I was back on NPR’s Here & Now to discuss Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor. It’s possible that even if you consider yourself a novice listener of classical music, this concerto’s core theme will ring a bell.

This is one of those pieces of classical music that I feel like I’ve known my whole life, though I probably heard it for the first time in high school. I can’t help but stop everything I’m doing when I hear it on classical radio or if it comes up on one of my playlists. Anyway, Phil grabbed me a beautiful vinyl recording of it when he was out record-shopping the other week, and I’ve played it through several times now when hanging out, cooking, reading, what have you.

Then, the other weekend, Lindsey came over to eat dinner and play video games and I put it on to feign a sense of self-importance. Lindsey, listening intently, said, “Why does this sound like the Celine Dion song?”

I said, “Lindsey, please respect the legacy of Rachmaninoff when you’re in my house.”

But Lindsey was insistent that Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor sounded like a Celine Dion song, and she looked it up, and lo and behold, All by Myself, an Eric Carmen song most famously covered by Celine Dion, is “based on the second movement (Adagio sostenuto) of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor.” Who’d have known?! Everyone say, “good ear, Lindsey!” and I will learn to respect Celine Dion (and Eric Carmen) as much as I do Rachmaninoff.