Kendall, you and me, both: Number one, Beethoven's violin concerto in "D" as played by Jascha Heifitz. It almost makes me swoon and I have had that exact recording for over 35 years; just got it on CD.

Don, thanks for the plug for some modern composers. One who springs to mind is Douglas Moore, who wrote The Ballad of Baby Doe. My brother, Delton Lorenzo Hudson, is a tonal classical composer whose symphonic tone poem, "The Ode to the Rockies" has been performed and recorded. He has written several symphonies and piano concertos as well as solo piano pieces. All have beautiful melodies and impressive counter-point, etc. He is able to compose it all in one draft, by hand, just as they showed Mozart doing in Amadeus. (BTW, seems, contrary to the movie, Mozart did revise sometimes.:-)

Anyway, I used to be my brother's manager. We also recorded a live all-Hudson concert in RI at one point. He studied, privately, with Roy Harris, whose music I love, esp. a piano suite (can't remember the name of it right now) which uses several old trad tunes, including "Black is the Colour."

We grew up with tons of classical, on all of the time at our house, plus we all took piano lessons and some other isntrument (violin, for me.) My brother would put on some new favourite and teach me how to pick out each instrument, then explain the interweavings, etc. It was great and fun ear-training.

I love Mozart most of all, esp. the Magic Flute. Love Tch., Rimskey-Korsakov (whom my brother considers the best orchestrator of them all,)some Beethoven, Bach, Haydn and Brahms, as well as many of the others mentioned.

As to what makes me listen? Tonality, contrasts, a picture painted in my mind and a stirring in my heart. An elusive "something" which grabs me and lifts me up out of the mundane world.

For anyone who might be interested, my brother is working on his first opera and has just started a blog about it at Daily Process-composing an opera. His website has a couple of analog recordings of pieces from his live performance in RI, at metacomposer.com.

Thanks, this is a great thread!