OK, time to start up an occasional series of lists, because I like making lists – indeed, professionally, it’s probably the only thing I’m any good at. They will be personal lists: some favourite things, some least favourite things, some purely arbitrary. So, to kick things off, here are fourteen favourite pieces of classical music (compiled while the first of them just happens to be playing on Radio 3 at the moment), in no particular order…
1. Wolfgang Mozart, Divertimento for Violin, Viola and Cello in E flat major, K. 563
2. Charles Ives, Songs (but has to be as sung by Roberta Alexander, piano accompaniment Tan Crone)
3. Albéric Magnard, Quintette op. 8
4. James Macmillan, The Confession of Isobel Gowdie
5. Antonín Dvořàk, Five Bagatelles, op. 47
6. Henry Purcell, Dido and Aeneas (with Jessye Norman as Dido, naturally)
7. Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Missa Papae Marcelli
8. Poul Ruders, Violin Concerto no. 1
9. Alfred Schnittke, String Quartet no. 3
10. Dmitri Shostakovich, String Quartets (all fifteen of them)
11. Maurice Duruflé, Quatre Motets sur des Thémes Grégoriens, op. 10
12. Benjamin Britten, String Quartet no. 3, op. 94
13. Alexander Grechaninov, The Seven Days of Passion
14. Olivier Messiaen, Dieu parmi nous
