Music between pedantry and joy

DM recently asked, "What is your favorite classical music piece?" in a comment; in response I wrote a piece which I took down the next morning, because it sounded too schoolmastery and show-offish: form an orderly queue to admire my knowledge of music. Well, really.

I had blathered about the different forms of "classical" music and comparing carrots to hammers, the impossibility of comparing a symphony to a set of Lieder. All quite true; but balderdash none the less.

There is a single, very simple answer to DM's question. My favourite classical music piece is Beethoven's "Emperor" concerto, the fifth Piano Concerto in E-flat major; to be really specific, the slow second movement. This is the ne plus ultra of music, everything else - even Wagner, even Mozart, even Schubert and Robert Johnson and Steely Dan - jostle for the also-ran slots behind Opus 73. This is it.

This piece is just pure joy, the distilled essence of happiness in 3/4 time. It raises my spirits; it makes me smile and sometimes laugh out loud in the street. I recommend the Sony Glenn Gould edition: GG was twenty-seven years old when this was recorded, playing like a young god, playing as though it were not previously composed by LvB but simply arriving through his fingertips in the room. It's a magnificent performance.

What do I like particularly well (in the classical vein)?

Beethoven's other piano concertos, string quartets and symphonies (in that order).
Arvo Pärt's modern classical religious music, especially the Passio (by coincidence, Tim Bray wrote about Pärt recently).
Schubert's Lieder, especially the Winterreise.
Mozart's operas, particularly Don Giovanni.
Wagner's operas, particularly Parzifal and the Ringzyklus.
Philip Glass' opera Akhnaton.
George Gershwin's An American in Paris - or is that jazz?
Respighi's Fontane di Roma and Pini di Roma.

While writing this post I bought "It's only rock 'n' roll" by the Stones on iTunes. This was the first piece of rock music to enter my consciousness, in July of 1974. I still remember vividly hearing it on the radio of a taxi, on the way from Heathrow airport to London, and seeing the title sprayed on the side of a bridge as we drove under it.

If I could stick my hand on my heart
Spill it all over the stage:
Would it satisfy you, would it slide on by you,
Would you think the boy is strange?

But that's another story for another bedtime.