Is it me?

[JimL]

I don't remember the Chopin tune in the Mahler Eighth (I've even sung in the latter piece - I'm one of 200 people in the chorus on the Ozawa recording), but I can't hear the beginning of the final movement of the Mahler Third without thinking of "I'll Be Seeing You in All the Old Familiar Places."

Usually just makes me think of Beethoven op.135/iii.
To add one more example, Medtner wrote a piano sonata in C minor, "Skazka-Sonata" (Folktale-sonata is one possible translation; not Fairytale, though, please), his op.25/1 in C minor, around 1910-11. The second of the three sections opens with a melody in E-flat - Bes G... As Bes Es which may "remind" a lot of people, for its first four notes especially and allowing for the different rhythm, of a famous tune in the same key from Rachmaninoff's Paganini Variations (written, of course, several decades later. The two composers were very good friends, of course.) (It reminded my father, though, of a popular tune from around the time the Medtner was written... can't remember the name offhand unfortunately!)

(It is btw dedicated to Alexander Goedicke, whose edition of the score it is that is uploaded to IMSLP.) Anyhow!

If you're referring to the 18th Variation from the Rachmanonoff work, I think it's in D-flat not E-flat.  I could be mistaken, of course.  And the entire variation is an augmented inversion of the Paganini theme upon which the work is based (the 24th Caprice).

[eschiss1]

ah, the whole variation? I knew the opening of it was (the Medtner relation just made for a pleasant coincidence really- sorry. Though I recall John Wiser suggesting in a Fanfare review that Rach's 4th concerto and Medtner's 2nd, dedicated to each other, were subtly related, not thematically so much as structurally- or something. Anyhow. Digressions...) You're right- D-flat (the score, parts and reductions are all in US-copyright so I'll have to check Dover or look at the score at the library to be 99.44-100% sure, but other sources do more or less confirm that. I'd thought it was in the tritone, for some reason... it made a sort of sense!)

[JimL]

Yes, Eric.  The whole variation is an inversion of the entire theme.  Most ingenious.

[Lionel Harrsion]

No, it's me too.  There's a passage near the beginning of Richard Strauss' Don Juan -- the warm, melting tune starting 7 bars after letter B, if I can put it that way -- that's note-for-note (in terms of melody and harmony) the same as the opening of the 2nd movement of Ferdinand Ries's Symphony no 4 (the Strauss is in E Major and the Ries in C Major but otherwise...)  My jaw dropped when I first hear the Ries last year!

[X. Trapnel]

There's a passage towards the end of Rangstrom's Third Symphony that is echt-Vertigo (also to an extent the slow movement fro Poulenc's Concerto for Two Pianos), but then there's hardly any piece by Rangstrom without a Herrmannesque phrase or two.

[TerraEpon]

Speaking of Strauss, there's a place in the Burleske for Piano and Orchestra that you can basically sing "There's  a place for us"...

[Ilja]

May I (not so) humbly present the all-time grand champion at this (disallowing PDQ Bach and the other comedians): José Alberto Kaplan. http://www.compomus.mus.br/cds.php?ler=cd_kaplan

Just listen to his Piano Concerto!  Or his Abertura Festiva! (you can hear them on that page)

Jim, have you succeeded in downloading the 2nd and 3rd movement of the concerto entirely? Here, I can't download the entire files apparently.

[mbhaub]

Two of my favorites:

There's a theme in Tosca, that sounds remarkably like Charlie Chaplin's "Smile" for a phrase. I can't listen to Tosca without thinking about it. Of course, Tosca came first.

The other is from Korngold's score to Kings Row. There's a theme that is remarkably similar to a theme in Sibelius' Finlandia. I wonder if Korngold was aware of it?

[eschiss1]

I always think of "Bali Ha'i" (from the musical South Pacific.) when I hear part of the 2nd group from Zemlinsky's 1st string quartet (1896), Allegro con fuoco opening mvt (there's this brief turn of phrase, repeated a few times.  Ok, an odd thought and not the exact notes, but I do think I mean always. And vice versa, as South Pacific was revived recently.)  This one is just me...
Eric

[albion]

There is a prominent horn call in Scene 2 of Sullivan's The Golden Legend, just after Ursula has sung

"Alas that I should live to see
Thy death, beloved, and to stand
Above thy grave".

that is a dead-ringer for the opening of Tara's Theme from Gone with the Wind!   

[TerraEpon]

Yeah, but Tara's Theme ALSO sounds a good deal like the finale of Beethoven's "Waldstein" Sonata.

[Lionel Harrsion]

There is a prominent horn call in Scene 2 of Sullivan's The Golden Legend, just after Ursula has sung

"Alas that I should live to see
Thy death, beloved, and to stand
Above thy grave".

that is a dead-ringer for the opening of Tara's Theme from Gone with the Wind!   

I am always tickled by Ursula's first line in Scene 2 of the Golden Legend: "Slowly, slowly up the wall."  I have been up there with her many, many times.  (Tut-tut!  Such unwarranted levity!)

[Alan Howe]

BTW has anybody else spotted Till Eulenspiegel in the finale of Gernsheim 4 yet? Is it me?

[X. Trapnel]

1. The Tara theme also turns up in Beethoven's 5th Cello Sonata (2nd mvmnt I think)
2. The main theme of Lawrence of Arabia is something of an idee fixe in Lalo's Piano Concerto
3. I hear Bali Hai in the opening of the last movement of the Dvorak 7th Symphony.

[alberto]

 About Till and the Finale of Gernsheim 4, I have to humbly say that I don't notice musical links (apart from a generalized jocular mood).