Classical

The greatest pieces of classical music? In just one Essentials list? We know, it's a tall order, but we hope you'll find most of your favourites — and a few that perhaps you'd like to know better — among this A-list selection. Nigel Kennedy gets us underway in sprightly fashion with the "Spring" section (a.k.a. "La Primavera") from the opening of Vivaldi's Four Seasons, while Berlin's Radio-Symphonie-Orchester whips Carl Orff's Carmina Burana into a state of fearsome magnificence.

The classical spirit-stirring continues apace, in Next Steps.

Fancy a dose of triple-strength classical euphoria? Then cue up a couple of the pieces with strong Stateside connections: Boston Pops legend Arthur Fiedler extracts a full measure of sky-scraping bombast from Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries", while Aaron Copland — the composer who stunningly transformed the wild, widescreen West into music — heads up the London Symphony Orchestra to oversee his own "Fanfare for the Common Man".

Du Pre does Elgar, in Deep Cuts.

From Coppélia's elegant waltz to the meticulously controlled hyper-activity of Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumble Bee", these pieces span the classical range but, for our money, there are few finer moments than the gently paced, elegiac perfection of Elgar's Cello Concerto in E Minor — performed by the peerless Jacqueline Du Pre — or the graceful melancholy of "Intermezzo Sinfonica" from Mascagni's gorgeous Cavalleria Rusticana.

For all you longtime aficionados of classical music, there's little here you won't have heard before, but that doesn't make the list any less compelling — with these Essentials, we've endeavoured to compile the "best of the best": a selection of classical classics, if you like. And if you're new to it all, these pieces make an ideal introduction. Ease your way in with the mellower compositions — Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata", Vaughan Williams' "The Lark Ascending", Debussy's "Clair de Lune" — before building up to the superlative, rousing brilliance of Handel's Zadok the Priest, Rossini's "William Tell Overture", or the introduction to Saint-Saëns' Carnival Of the Animals. The pleasure, we can assure you, is all yours.