Mimi Ezust:

>But where is our profound musical 'home'?  Who are the composers we most
>turn to when we are feeling like we want to cleanse our tastebuds?  Which
>are the compositions we select when we need a good old pal, or want to
>renew ourselves after a very stressful time?  What is our own personal,
>guaranteed, tried-and-true feel-good music?  What are the pieces of music
>we have sought out more than five times in the last year?

I don't dare listen to any piece five times in a year, lest it lose its
freshness, as has happened with some former favorites (lots of Beethoven
and Brahms, for instance.) My personal core pieces are those I cannot
get enough of after many years, and which I just have to hear at least
once a year.  Some of those go back half a century, for me, and quite a
few are "old warhorses" by any measure, which I have thought twice about
mentioning, but what the heck....  Their compositional dates span a few
centuries.  Here is some of my favorite musical comfort food:

Bach - Brandenburg #6; various chorales; Overture in the French Manner
(Sandor, piano)

Vivaldi - Mandolin Concerti

Scarlatti - Sonatas (Gieseking)

Telemann - Suite in A Minor for Flute and Strings

Stoelzel - Concerto Grosso for Trumpets, Strings and Continuo

Beethoven - 4th Piano Concerto (the most comforting piece I know, though
I can't hear it as often as I once did); Pastoral Symphony; Tempest
Sonata (when my wife plays it.)

Schubert - Unfinished Symphony;  Great C Major Symphony

Mendelssohn - Midsummer Night's Dream (complete--Leppard or Previn);
Scottish Symphony

Schumann - Cello Concerto; Rhenish Symphony

Brahms - Handel Variations (Fleischer)

Dvorak - 8th Symphony

Mahler - 3d Symphony

Strauss - Burlesque for Piano and Orchestra

Tchaikovsky -5th Symphony

Borodin - 2nd Symphony

Mussorgsky - Pictures at an Exhibition

Stravinsky - Petrouchka, Firebird (complete)

Prokofiev - Classical Symphony; Romeo and Juliet (complete)

Shostakovich - Piano Concerto #2

Bartok - Dance Suite; Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste; Piano
Concerto #3

Sibelius - Symphony #2; Violin Concerto, and nearly everything else

Copland - Appalachian Spring

Barber - Symphony 1; Violin Concerto

Schuman - New England Triptych

Ives - Three Places in New England

Bloch - Concerto Grosso #1

Diamond - 4th Symphony

Thompson - Symphony 2

Thomson - Symphony on a Hymn Tune

Shapero - Symphony for Classical Orchestra

Rochberg - Slow Fires of Autumn

Meyer - Violin Concerto

Elgar - Cello Concerto; Enigma Variations

Vaughan Williams - London Symphony; Tallis Fantasia (and plenty more).

Debussy - La Mer

Ravel - Daphnis & Chloe; Piano Concertos

Poulenc - Concertos

Respighi - Ancient Airs and Dances Suites

Orff - Carmina Burana

Henze - Telemanniana

Jim Tobin