With the turn of the decade, seeing many "best of 2000s" lists and opinions, I thought this might be interesting. Maybe your opinion will have someone give your favorite a listen. The 1800's will have the most to draw upon...Maybe it's a stupid thread

1. Mozart
2. Beethoven
3. Tchaikovskyi
4. Bach
5. Arthur Sullivan
6. Richard Wagner
7. Chopin
8. Haydn
9. Brahms
10. Bizet

I'm partial to Chopin and Liszt.

Liszt needs to be on any list.

Sounds like a credit score app.

Agreed. I’ve got my Chopin Liszt right here. I need milk, eggs, and fabric softener.

This thread is Mohr than I can Handel - I'm going into Haydn.

I'm far from an authority on classical music even though I grew up surrounded by it, but I'm very fond of the two Schus, Schubert and Schumann, particularly the former. Schubert is responsible for a number of the most moving piano sonatas ever composed.

My first thought was Rachmaninoff as a double-threat composer and pianist, but the bulk of his work was after 1900.

I can't deny any of the big name masters, but Berlioz, Liszt, and Rachmaninoff are essential to me. For some reason, I'm drawn to both the Baroque and Romantic periods. I love my sturm and drang, but damn Vivaldi and Bach are undeniably exquisite.

I think the late Romantic period should still count.

You can't forget Johan Strauss II and his waltzes. The Strauss musical dynasty dominated popular 19th Century music halls in Europe.

I'm ao happy there aome other listeners! I don't disagree with any comments.

Schubert also has the great cello quintet, and Trout isn’t too shabby either. (Strings-only chamber quartets can be a little intense for me so I guess I’m attracted to the more unusual combos, like these and the Mendelssohn octet,)

Liszt would fit the Rachmaninoff profile of composer and virtuoso performer, but I know only a few of his compositions.

I agree! I am going to listen to some artists I didn't know!

I remember a badly translated version of Akira Kurosawa's One Wonderful Sunday, where the two main characters are trying to get tickets to the "Incomplete Orchestra". Only when I saw a poster in the background that said "Schubert" did it finally click.

Richard Wagner (pronounced vaugner)

Favorite:
Siegfried's Funeral Music from the Opera Gotterdammerung

As used in the 1981 John Boorman film Excalibur

Absolutely love Scenes from Childhood, by Schumann. Horowitz kills it, here.

If the YouTube description is accurate, Schumann wrote all of these (and then some) in a few days. I'll can't imagine how someone can write these pieces, at all, and doing so, in a few days, is unfathomable.

^I love Kinderszenen, and Horowitz is such a delight. The sincerity and concentration of his performance is deeply moving to me.

Before 1900 probably means no Holst or Stravinsky...

1. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
2. Ludwig von Beethoven
3. Niccolo Paganini
4. Johann Sebastian Bach
5. Sergei Rachmanimoff
6. Antonio Vivaldi
7. Giacomo Puccini
8. Giuseppe Verdi
9. Pyotr Tchaikovsky
10. Franz Liszt