When Rachmaninov met Walt Disney

Here's a great photo I came across the other day, of Sergei Rachmaninov, Walt Disney and Vladimir Horowitz. Shame it's so grainy but you get the idea. It seems that Rachmaninov went on a tour of the Walt Disney studios in 1942 with Horowitz, both pianists being a fan of Disney's films.

I wonder what they were talking about here? Answers on a postcard please.*

Perhaps one of the topics they discussed was Rachmaninov's famous C sharp minor Prelude, the dramatic piano piece of 1892 for which audiences clamoured, and which the composer himself came to detest. Why might they have been talking about this? Well, I came across an anecdote in a book by Ivan Raykoff about the Sergei-Walt-Vladimir encounter: 'In Walt Disney's early animation short The Opry House (1929), Mickey Mouse performs Rachmaninov's famous Prelude. "I have heard my inescapable piece done marvelously by some of the best pianists, and murdered cruelly by amateurs," the composer reportedly told Disney, "but never was I more stirred than by the performance of a the great maestro Mouse."'

Here is that performance. Perhaps Rachmaninov had a twinkle in his eye behind that famous scowl after all...