Classical music: a beginner's guide

I've been on the Steve Lamacq show on 6 Music this week with an interesting challenge. Lamacq is as much of an ingenue when it comes to classical music as I am when it comes to the arcana of indie music since circa 1990, and he wanted my help to get into classical. It's a good week to do it, too, with the Proms opening on Friday. You can listen to us on the show on Monday here (from about 90 minutes in). Like many musos immersed in their own generic patch who haven't got round to classical yet, Lamacq is fearful because he thinks it's so huge a world it's impossible to know where to start. I suggested that all you really need to get you going is about 50 key works. And you'll also hear how we kicked off Lamacq's odyssey into classical, with Rossini's William Tell, Bach's Goldberg Variations, and John Adams's Short Ride in a Fast Machine.

Here's the list I came up with for Lamacq to listen to over the rest of his Classical Week: a three-a-day diet of a core classic or two and a 20th-century masterpiece. Most of these you'll be able to hear over the course of the Proms, but the challenge was to come up with a compilation that would be enticing but challenging enough to convert a hardcore indie fan to the ways of Ligeti and Stockhausen, Verdi and Mahler, Elgar and Schubert.

Day two – Schubert: String Quintet in C, Adagio, Smetana: Vltava from Ma Vlast, Steve Reich: Music for 18 Musicians.

Day three – Verdi: Dies Irae from the Requiem, Stravinsky: The Firebird Suite, Stockhausen: Gesang der Jünglinge.

Day four – Ravel: Bolero, Mahler: Symphony No 2, 'Resurrection', Ligeti: Requiem.

Day five – Elgar: Enigma Variations, Beethoven: Ninth Symphony, Krzysztof Penderecki: Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima.

What do you think? I'll find out if Steve's a fully-fledged classical fan on Friday – and if he is, I'll get him along to his first Prom. And if, like Lamacq, you're just starting to get into classical music, I hope this list might help, but if you're already a classical nut, what handful of works would you choose to win over new listeners?