br>Great music deserves something better than plasticky little earbuds. Photograph: Getty/Michael Wildsmith
Christmas wishes to you all, classical fans! It's December, OK? That's good enough for me, especially as I've just spent the last couple of weeks savouring my last remaining dregs of annual leave. An early break has its advantages: I've already managed to scour the shops and websites (so you don't have to) to pick out a few choice items that belong on the Christmas wish list of any classical aficionado.
Hopefully you've been a very good boy or girl this year and Santa will be bringing you tickets to the complete Beethoven Piano Sonata Cycle Daniel Barenboim is giving at the Royal Festival Hall in January and February. Barenboim's credentials as a pianist are unquestioned and he clearly has the greatest respect and affection for this repertoire, which he has recorded and performed countless times. But the real draw is Beethoven's sonatas themselves: as András Schiff demonstrated in the lecture cycle posted on these pages last year, each and every one of them is a jewel. Of course, if Santa isn't quick enough (or wealthy enough) to snap up tickets for the concerts, you will have to hope he brings you Bazza's six-disc DVD set of the same pieces instead; it also includes some fascinating master classes, obviating the need to download Schiff's otherwise essential lectures.
It might be worth investing in an extra large stocking if you'd like to see it filled with the weighty tome that is 1001 Classical Recordings You Must Hear Before You Die - which you do. Out last month, this excellent new companion could give the Penguin Guide a run for its money in the doorstop stakes, and has rather a lot more to say about music to boot. Unlike most record guides, it doesn't compare dozens of recordings of each work, preferring to give you a well-chosen list of 'must-hear' pieces in chronological order - ranging from the 12th century right up to 2004. The actual CD recommendations are sound enough, but the real reason to burden your groaning bookshelves with this 1.7kg behemoth is the generous and often insightful text describing each work and its canonical significance.
If a 960-page whopper isn't enough to rend your stocking asunder, perhaps one of the squillion CD boxsets currently flooding the market will do the job. I picked up one of EMI's Collector's Editions the other day, a 50-disc Mozart extravaganza that contains all the important works and rather a few more besides in generally decent - sometimes outstanding - performances. Or how about celebrating Harmonia Mundi's 50th anniversary with a 30-disc boxset covering almost as wide a chronology as the 1001 Recordings book above? There are also complete - or near-complete - sets of Beethoven, Schubert, Stravinsky and even Bach available these days, all at a relatively low cost.
Of course, if you are going to listen to all that music, you will almost certainly need to do so whilst on the move - after all, no-one has that much time at home these days. No doubt Father Christmas has already brought you an mp3 player or some other portable listening device, but are those plasticky little earbuds that came with it really doing justice to all that great music? Why not leave out an extra mince pie or two on Christmas Eve and hope for a pair of Etymotic ER-6i earbuds, which not only come in trendy tennis shoe white and reproduce music beautifully, but also block out external sound to the extent one can actually listen to a Morton Feldman track on the Tube? Unlike other noise-cancelling headphones, they don't even need batteries to work - the principle is the same as sticking your fingers in your ears.
So, what have I missed? What's on your Christmas wish list?
