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Welcome to Classical.com's repertoire guide - 10 great pieces!  

Classical Academy

Here’s a list of ten great pieces. They are not the ten greatest pieces (if such a list were possible to make). They are all great for different reasons, and once you’ve listened to all ten you’ll only just have begun to scratch the surface of classical music. However, these pieces are a good place to start and knowledge of them will make you an instant expert (of sorts)! Some of them are multi-movement works, so you can start with listening to just one movement if the whole work is too long.

The playlist contains extracts from some of those on this list, and clicking on the CD covers will take you to the CD shop where you can preview selected tracks for free.

Eight Great Works 

1) Beethoven: Symphony No. 5 Perhaps the most famous of all symphonies, this is classic Beethoven. If you enjoy this, try one of the other 8 symphonies Beethoven wrote.

2) Mozart: Marriage of Figaro Possibly Mozart’s supreme achievement in Opera, this has a great story, some great tunes, and a few laughs thrown in for good measure!

3) Holst: Suite ‘The Planets’ Holst’s musical description of the planets is one of the great works of the 20th century. Pluto is missing from the suite as the planet was discovered in 1930, thirteen years after the piece was completed.

4) Johann Strauss II: The Blue Danube This elegant concert waltz is used every year as the highpoint of the New Year’s Day concert in Vienna, perfectly capturing the beauty of the great city.

5) Rossini: The Barber of Seville A great comic opera by one of the greatest Italian composers. Its famous overture is also used for two other Rossini operas!

7) Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique Possibly Berlioz’s greatest contribution to orchestral music, the Symphonie Fantastique is a wonderfully colourful and exuberant work.

8) Schumann: Dichterliebe One of the greatest song cycles for voice and piano, this setting of 16 of Heine’s poems translates as ‘Poet’s Love’.

9) Shostakovich: Symphony No. 10 When Stalin died in 1953, Shostakovich was finally free to write his first symphony since the retraction of his Moscow professorship in 1948. The result is one of the great symphonies of the 20th Century with the 2nd movement thought to be a portrait of Stalin himself.

10) Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 6 Tchaikovsky’s last work is a masterpiece of emotional angst, a fitting testament to the turmoil of the composer’s last days. The nickname ‘Pathetique’ means ‘passionate’ or ‘emotional’ in Russian.