``Brief Encounter,'' that magnificent 1945 tear-jerker, is a small masterpiece of subtlety and realism in all respects but one.
The acting of Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard is restrained but moving, David Lean's direction is a model of the craft, and Noel Coward's story is a touching account of the guilt and frustration surrounding a stymied love affair.
The one element that doesn't fit with all this is the score - Sergei Rachmaninov's piano Concerto No. 2. While the main characters maintain the English tradition of keeping the upper lip stiff while everything else sags, Rachmaninov's music trudges darkly across the soundtrack, every emotion fully indulged.
Because it doesn't fit, it's actually quite an effective contrast, and a fine illustration of the power of Rachmaninov's music.
The last of the Russian Romantics, Rachmaninov was born in 1873 and had the misfortune of living to 1943, a time when Romanticism in the arts was denigrated and the only music taken seriously was rarefied and abstract.
After half a century, Rachmaninov has been forgiven for having been a living fossil, the last representative (aside from Richard Strauss) of musical ideals that had been out of fashion since World War I.
Romanticism, which flourished through the 19th century, is often contrasted with Classicism, the dominant aesthetic of the late 18th century. The standard oversimplification is that Classicism was concerned with reason and form, and Romanticism emphasized emotion and impulse.
This distinction is not entirely realistic. Mozart, the master of Classical style, wrote highly expressive symphonies and operas. And most composers of the Romantic era continued to use the patterns established by Mozart's contemporaries - sonata form, thematic development and so forth.
The big difference is that for the Romantics, the forms got looser and the emotions became intensified; the music grew larger than life.
Furthermore, Mozart's music, while filled with personal touches, was carefully designed to conform to the general expectations and requirements of his audience. Mozart's was public music, belonging more to society than to Mozart.
A Romantic composer, on the other hand, made every work an act of individual expression. The composer's artistic values, not society's, were at the center of the work.
Classicists were like members of a debating team, delivering beautifully crafted arguments in a formal setting. Romantics were like soapbox orators in the city park, delivering disorganized but passionate appeals based entirely on their personal experiences.
Rachmaninov grew up during the height of the Romantic movement, and his early works from the 1890s - the first piano concerto, the one-act opera ``Aleko,'' a one-movement piano trio - were heavily influenced by P.I. Tchaikovsky, the ultimate Russian Romantic.
But soon he developed his own style, which might be thought of as ``Tchaikovsky plus.'' Rachmaninov was a celebrated pianist, and his piano music was virtuosic and thick with notes. All his music favored long, singing melodies and succulent harmonies. Many of the scores were gruff and gloomy in the beginning, but they usually opened up for hectic, life-affirming finales.
He wrote three symphonies, but a savage reception to the first stifled his urge to compose for three years. (The score was then lost until after Rachmaninov's death, but when it was recovered it turned out to be a colorful symphony full of zest and vitality; the early criticism seems to have been a reaction to the terrible premiere performance.)
After therapy for depression, Rachmaninov came bounding back in 1901 with his second piano concerto, to this day his most popular work. It used to be sneered at by people who prefer music of balance and reserve, but most listeners have now surrendered to the concerto's heart-on-sleeve emotionalism.
Rachmaninov then composed prolifically until World War I. His solo piano pieces, like the two sets titled ``Etudes-tableaux,'' were like paintings in sound. Each one seemed to describe a scene or reflect some intense mood, although Rachmaninov rarely identified the specific inspiration of such pieces.
The inspiration of his most famous symphonic poem, though, is quite clear. He wrote ``The Isle of the Dead'' in 1907, after having been impressed by a black-and-white print showing a shrouded figure guiding a small boat carrying a coffin toward the cliffs of a grim, cypress-spotted island. (When Rachmaninov later saw the original color painting by Amold Boecklin, he was much less enthusiastic.)
The 20-minute symphonic poem is a dark lament, with a restless cello line suggesting waves lapping against the cliffs and a grim brass chorale evoking a funeral procession. At the height of the work, Rachmaninov brings in the ``Dies Irae,'' a well-known Gregorian chant melody from the medieval Mass for the dead.
Rachmaninov managed to work this eerie theme into nearly all of his major orchestral scores.
At about the same time, Rachmaninov produced two of his other greatest successes, the second symphony and the third piano concerto. Both are sumptuous works with colorful scoring and unforgettable melodies.
In 1918 Rachmaninov moved to the United States, and the rest of his life was devoted largely to grueling tours as a piano soloist. Music was changing during this period, and Rachmaninov did try to change with the times. His few later scores have terser melodies and more pungent harmonies - but that's only in comparison to his pre-war music.
The late music is still obviously Rachmaninov. The 1931 ``Variations on a Theme of Corelli'' for solo piano are taut and hypnotic, but only slightly drier than his earlier piano works.
The enormously popular 1934 ``Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini'' for piano and orchestra relies on more fragmentary tunes and a more sparing, sardonic use of the orchestra than before. But two-thirds of the way through, it blossoms into a variation as lush and heartfelt as anything from Rachmaninov's earlier days.
And there is nothing truly newfangled about Rachmaninov's final major composition, the 1940 ``Symphonic Dances'' for orchestra. More rhythmic bite, yes; less reliance on massed strings to carry the melodies, yes. But the emotion is still uninhibited, and the tunes swirl and droop pretty much as they did in the pre-war piano scores.
Rachmaninov listening suggestions
It's easy to find good recordings of Rachmaninov's music on compact disc. For the solo piano works, anything done by Vladimir Ashkenazy is worth hearing. Perhaps the best place to start is with his London recording of the Corelli variations and the opus 39 set of ``Etudes-tableaux.''
Ashkenazy has also recorded the piano concerto cycle twice - with conductor AndrC Previn on London, and a more recent set with Bernard Haitink on the same label. The discs are available separately. Other good choices for individual concertos would be Zolt;in Kocsis on Philips, Van Cliburn on RCA - the list is endless.
For economical two-disc sets containing the three concertos and the ``Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini,'' there's a good box from Chandos with soloist Howard Shelley. And Vox has reissued its early-'70s series with Abby Simon on two budget-priced discs.
As for the symphonies, Ashkenazy pops up as conductor in a series on London. Lorin Maazel does an excellent job on Deutsche Grammophon, available only as a three-disc set. Andrew Litton has turned in admirable work on Virgin, and the three symphonies have been squeezed into another two-disc Vox box featuring Leonard Slatkin.
And if you're interested in the other orchestral music, you might as well spring for still another inexpensive Vox box, with Slatkin leading the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in all Rachmaninov's orchestral works (excluding the symphonies and concertos) on three discs.