“It is the second piano concerto by Rachmaninoff that is perfect. As the bell-chords that open the work move into the opening theme Marilyn Monroe comes into focus…it is a fantasy sequence.

She wears a tiger-skin dress and is smoking a cigarette. Sherman reclines at the piano in a smoking jacket that looks like it came from the closet of Hugh Hefner. The conversation is deliberately campy and fabulous.

‘Rachmaninoff… It isn’t fair… Every time I hear it, I go to pieces… It shakes me, it quakes me. It makes me feel goose-pimply all over. I don’t know where I am or who I am or what I’m doing. Don’t stop. Don’t stop. Don’t ever stop!'”

The brilliantly comic ‘Rachmaninoff scene’ from The Seven Year Itch (1955) is being discussed over at Sonic Labyrinth, a ‘blog for the eternally cool in classical music’.