The very first classical music I ever listened to was Schubert's four Impromptus, D899. I was 22 and living in the teachers' hostel in Chelsea, the old MaJon's site. I had a Ferguson radio cassette recorder and I taped the music from the radio. The wow and flutter was legendary. I couldn't get my head around the transcendent beauty of that music. Not long after that I taped Beethoven's Seventh too. I picked precisely the right music to get a chap hooked for life. I first met Mrs Steve in that hostel and we got married two years later. I had a wonderful friend called Steve Rose (not the Guardian one) who lent me his records of Beethoven's late string quartets. I knew hardly any other classical music at all but those "complicated" works drew me in straight away and have been my companions for over forty years. I have five versions of them on CD, including the CD versions of those LPs he lent me, played by the Smetana Quartet. You can still buy them today, as you can the 1930s versions played by the Busch Quartet. The only barriers to letting this wonderful music into your life are the barriers you yourself might put up. There's no "hard" music. Beethoven, Mozart and Bach all jump straight out of the record player, grab you by the lapels and shout "Oi, you, listen to this! I wrote this for YOU!" Even Messiaen!