Cocktail Party Fact: The nickname wasn’t adopted until about 30 years after Mozart’s death, and it has nothing at all to do with the music, as far as anyone can tell.
Commitment Factor: About 35 minutes
Vital Statistics: Classical Period (1788). A very grand, four-movement symphony including trumpets and timpani but (unusual for Mozart at this time) [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: This score exists only as a single autograph copy because it was written for very special circumstances: the invention of a trumpet that could play notes in any key. The instrument was a failure, but the music, fortunately survived. It is Haydn’s very last purely orchestral work.
Commitment Factor: About 17 minutes
Vital Statistics: [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: “The twelfth that I have composed in England” Haydn wrote on the manuscript score–it was to be his last symphony, though he had another decade of productivity ahead of him. Taken as a whole, Haydn’s 106 symphonies represent a body of work unsurpassed in both quality and quantity in the history of [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: This series of symphonies was Haydn’s musical calling card to his new employer, Prince Paul Esterhazy, whose favorite piece was Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons.” If you like the Vivaldi, then this is the sequel.
Commitment Factor: 20 - 25 minutes (each)
Vital Statistics: Late Baroque/Classical Period (1761). Although Haydn was one of the “big [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: Beethoven arranged this work as a piano concerto as well–and not very successfully, either.
Commitment Factor: 40 - 45 minutes
Vital Statistics: Classical Period (1806). A three-movement concerto for violin and orchestra with an unusually spacious first movement.
What to Listen For: This is one of Beethoven’s most serene pieces, especially in the lengthy first [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: Beethoven produced some of his most profound and moving music while he was living in an incredibly squalid set of rooms. One visitor even noted that he kept a chamber pot under the piano.
Commitment Factor: About 40-60 minutes per quartet.
Vital Statistics: Late Beethoven (1824-27). Six string quartets that were written in the [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: The famous “Joy” theme from the finale has been a movie hit, from “Clockwork Orange,” to “Die Hard” (just part one, part two uses “Finlandia” by Sibelius). If you’re old enough to remember “The Huntley/Brinkley Report,” then you know the second movement as well.
Commitment Factor: About 65 minutes
Vital Statistics: Classical Period (1824). [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: Contemporary audiences, finding this work too lightweight, used to take the famous “allegretto” movement from the Seventh Symphony and stick it in second place here. Beethoven thought it didn’t make as good an impression as the Seventh because “the Eighth is so much better.”
Commitment Factor: About 22 minutes
Vital Statistics: Classical Period (1812). [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: If you’ve seen “It’s the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown” then you know this symphony.
Commitment Factor: About 35 minutes
Vital Statistics: Classical Period (1812). A regular, four-movement symphony, but with no real slow movement (though the second movement is slower than the other three). The introduction to the first movement is so big it [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: First performed at the same concert that featured the premiers of the Fifth Symphony, the Choral Fantasia, and the Fourth Piano Concerto. The concert (in a freezing hall with broken heating) was a bust.
Commitment Factor: About 40 minutes
Vital Statistics: Classical Period (1808). An unusual work, structurally. There are five movements, with the [...]