“My musical matters go very badly,” lamented Sergei Rachmaninoff in the summer of 1899. 

Rachmaninoff had experienced overwhelming success as a pianist and composer—his Prelude in C-sharp Minor became so popular he grew to resent the work, referring to the Prelude only as “It”—but musical matters had indeed gone sour for twenty-six year old Rachmaninoff. Two years prior, his First Symphony premiered in St. Petersburg and the event was so catastrophic it sent him into a years-long mental collapse. 

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov attended rehearsals and had many things to say, though none of them positive. “Forgive me, but I do not find this music at all agreeable,” Rimsky-Korsakov said to Rachmaninoff. Alexander Glazunov conducted, though his abilities on the podium were less than stellar; Rimsky-Korsakov described Glazunov’s mannerisms as “maladroit and clumsy by nature.” At rehearsal breaks, Rachmaninoff begged to speak with the maestro but was continuously dismissed. Futile rehearsals aside, the show went on. The premiere of Symphony No. 1 was nothing short of a fiasco: Glazunov was (allegedly) drunk on the podium, the orchestra had been run ragged in unproductive rehearsals, and Rachmaninoff hid backstage, anxious and completely humiliated. In concert reviews shortly after, César Cui (a leading figure in Russian music) decimated the quality of Rachmaninoff’s symphonic endeavor. “If there were a conservatory in Hell, and if one of its talented students were to compose. . . a symphony like Mr. Rachmaninoff’s, then he would have fulfilled his task brilliantly and would delight the inhabitants of Hell,” lambasted Cui. 

The stinging review disgraced Rachmaninoff, who spiraled and began drinking heavily. He deemed himself unfit to compose, fell into a deep depression, and vowed to focus only on his performance career. In 1899 Sergei Rachmaninoff was slated to premiere a new composition, Piano Concerto No. 2, in London, but he had a slight problem: the Second Concerto had not been written. A seemingly incurable writer’s block was an unfortunate comorbidity of Rachmaninoff’s mental state. He convinced the orchestra to allow him to appear as a conductor; the Philharmonic obliged so long as he conducted his own orchestral works and played the piano at some point during the program. Here, It rears its ugly head; Rachmaninoff traveled to London, opting to perform the Prelude in C-sharp minor for the expectant crowd. He was invited back the following year to perform his First Piano Concerto, though Rachmaninoff promised he would return to London with a “new, better concerto next time.” 

Despite his new deadline, Rachmaninoff’s mental health did not improve. Close friends thought a meeting with Leo Tolstoy would alleviate some of the mental pressure, but the appointment made matters worse. Tolstoy was cross and judgemental; Rachmaninoff later described him as “a very disagreeable man.” Forlorn, the composer took a strange turn towards experimental treatment: for months, Sergei Rachmaninoff made daily appointments with Dr. Nikolai Dahl, a psychologist who specialized in hypnotism. 

Dr. Dahl’s treatment was clearly successful. The power of suggestion entranced the composer; Dahl’s repeated mantras—“You will begin to write your concerto. You will work with great facility. The concerto will be of an excellent quality,”—proved correct. Movements II and III flowed from the composer effortlessly in the summer of 1900. So fruitful were Dr. Dahl’s incantations that Rachmaninoff noted the first movement was the most difficult to compose only because ideas came to him “in bulk.” Rachmaninoff had too much music. The Second Piano Concerto premiered in the fall of 1901 to critical acclaim, saving Rachmaninoff’s compositional reputation. Exponentially thankful to his hypnotist, Rachmaninoff dedicated the concerto to Dr. Nikolai Dahl. 

The concerto is packed with Rachmaninoff’s quintessential sound. All three movements exhibit luxuriant string melodies and dense orchestration. The first movement opens with somber bell tones, perhaps Pavlov’s, that bleed into decadent lyricism. Most mesmerizing is the second movement, Adagio sostenuto, that contains (arguably) one of the most spellbinding melodies in the orchestral repertoire. The clarinet solo in movement II is bewitching, able to induce its own kind of melodic trance. So much so that only a suggestion of the melody graces the orchestra at the end of the movement, but is perfectly internalized by the listener. The third movement snaps awake with rough, rhythmic strings that bring the concerto back to reality. 

Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto is so beloved by audiences that it has been quoted countless times. The concerto appears in multiple film soundtracks (Brief Encounter and Seven Year Itch, for two) and inspired Frank Sinatra, who quotes it in “I Think of You” (1957) and “Full Moon and Empty Arms” (1945). Perhaps most famously, the second movement melody is prominent in Eric Carmen’s 1975 hit “All By Myself.” In 2023, 2024, and 2025, Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto was voted #1 in the Classical FM Hall of Fame. Hypnotic, indeed.