New Listeners Should Start Here ...

Someone asked if there's a single piece to recommend to adults who don't know where to start with classical music.  I suggest you go for Schubert's final piano sonata, in B flat, D960.  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhTJdFF0I6o) 

It launches straight into one of the loveliest melodies he ever wrote - and that's saying something.  The mood of every movement is pitched between restlessness and serenity: his last thoughts, alas.  You have to wonder what the Almighty was playing at when he took Schubert from us at 31, just weeks after he had scaled new heights of sublimity.  And a recording?  By a nose, Stephen Kovacevich on EMI.


From Damien Thompson in today's Saturday Telegraph.