Brief Encounter, Royal Festival Hall

Is that something in your eye or are you crying just at the thought of that glorious Rachmaninov score swooshing through Brief Encounter? If you are sniffling away a tear, then this Valentine's Day screening with live music is for you.

Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard play the buttoned-up housewife Laura and gentle doctor Alec in David Lean's classic film from 1945, adapted from Noel Coward's play Still Life, one of 10 short plays set in a railway station.

And it is in the café of the sleepy Milford Junction that a chance meeting turns into a doomed love affair for Laura and Alec. As their romance unfolds, so too to the rushing melodies of Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto, played for the film by Eileen Joyce, and played at the Royal Festival Hall by the exciting young Romanian-born pianist Alexandra Dariescu with the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Dirk Brossé.

Dariescu made her debut in 2013 at the Royal Albert Hall with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the first ever Romanian female pianist to perform there. She won a Women of the Future Award in the Arts and Culture category that year, was Romania’s Woman of the Year in 2014, and has won five-star reviews for her recording of the romantic repertoire of Chopin, Schumann and Liszt. She is a perfect fit for this passionate piece, in short.

The Piano Concerto No 2 was first performed in 1901 with the Russian composer as soloist. Its success helped him to recover from the critical mauling of his First Symphony, three years earlier, and this new outpouring of creativity was partly the result of hypnotherapy.

Before the screening of the film at the Royal Festival Hall, with the RPO playing the soundtrack live, there will be a complete performance of the powerful concerto. Handkerchiefs at the ready ...