"Concierto de Aranjuez" by Joaquín Rodrigo.

I first heard it in my mid- to late-teens in the shady living room of a 'girlfriend'. She lived in a ground-floor flat on the seafront in Bexhill and we had been listening to "Close to the Edge" by Yes, sheltering from the summer heat after walking her dog on the beach. Her mother was also in, and when it finished playing she came in and commented on how 'classical' it sounded to her and then she put on this concierto. For some reason this combination of the time, place and people became locked into this piece of music for me. As John Betjamen wrote, "Why is it that a sunlit second sticks?" in By the Ninth Green, St Enodoc.

I have often wondered what became of Bridget when listening to it!

When you listen to the 7th now, does it take you back to the film or that time with the headphones, Martin?

Great story, thanks for sharing that Pete.

Scheherazade sends me into a hypnotic state every time I hear it! Utterly timeless, transcendent music, I just never tire of it. Was once lucky enough to see the ballet at the Royal Opera House, which was really special.

Although part of me really wants to escape London, I do wonder how much I would miss access to such rare opportunities.

Strangely enough it doesn't come round very often Brian and most likely part of a triple bill as it's only around 45mins long. I think we saw it performed by one of the touring Russian ballets like the Bolshoi or Mariinsky. Magical.

Mahler's First Symphony, or, in truth, any or all of his symphonies.

Back in the 70s, when I worked for BT, or The Post Office, as it probably still was then, much of our conversation was about music of one sort or another, but classical music very rarely entered into our general music conversations. One day, totally out of the blue, one of our "gang" (senior to me at the time, and in fact, I'd worked under him for a while) turned up with a boxed set of Mahler symphonies - to my shame I cannot even remember who the conductor or the orchestra was - and handed them to me, saying something like "I know you'll look after these, have a listen and tell me what you think." He may well have added, "if you scratch them I'll kill you".

So, you all have a very nice guy named Graham "Lofty" Loft to thank for my Mahler fixation, because I fell in love with the music on those discs.

I knew a lot of the "popular" classics, mostly from music that was played prior to school assemblies every day - Eine Kleine Nachtmusik is the first that springs to mind, along with the overtures from Die Fledermaus and ...Dutchman, and Night on Bald Mountain - but Mahler's symphonies were so far beyond my comprehension at the time they could have been written by aliens for all I knew.  Plus I was actually sitting down, listening to the music, rather than simply hearing it.

My one classical purchase up until then had been Mussorgsky's "Pictures..." and that was only because I wanted to hear where ELP had pinched it from.  So, yes, Mahler still on occasion takes me back almost 50 years, to Graham Loft, who has a lot to answer for.