Classical Top Five

Let's start a war. Toss Brahms!  Too stodgy! Go Mahler, Schubert, Stravinsky!

millercarbon -- On further thought I have to agree. Now, where's that tube of hydrocortisone to cure my illy itch?

I love my Benjamin Britten. He was also a heck of a fine conductor. His recordings of Mozart's Symphonies 25 & 29 on London Decca are constantly on my 'table. String tone to die for, as well.

Sing a lullaby to Brahms. Maybe he'll enjoy a snooze.

Try as I might, I'll always admire JS Bach more than truly love the guy. Just like Brahms, his stuff often strikes my ears as more contrived than inspired.  Either didactic or cranked out for a paycheck. It doesn't help that as the King (or whoever it was) told Mozart in the play Amadeus, there are just "too many notes." It's not that I haven't tried to give him his due, either. My record and CD shelves aren't exactly devoid of the dude. I dutifully toil through his Well Tempered Klavier on my piano.

@kenrus -- Yeah, one of my favorite records is a l'oiseau-lyre two LP edition of Handel's "Acis & Galatea" featuring an in-her-prime Joan Sutherland, but I mostly just can't get behind the composer. For me, his stuff just feels too specifically targeted to the Upper Clahhhses.  It lacks emotional power. It seems composed in a way to give an audience the okay to socialize and do business as it's being performed. 

I rank composers and other artists strictly on subjective, not objective criteria. I don't care how influential, prolific or technically adept they might be.  Do they penetrate past your intellect? Do they find and occupy the core of your being? Do they deliver the goods?

I do like some Wagner quite a lot, but I just can't put him among my favorites. Part of the problem for me is that his stuff just goes on too long.  Eventually, a sameness creeps in.  There's also a pomposity that can rub me the wrong way.  Yeah, I do have my share of Wagner on the shelf. But apart from the Siegfried Idyll and the first side of Die Meistersinger I probably haven't put any Wagner on the stereo this century.