Looking over my collection today I noticed a large portion of my classical works are either large orchestral pieces (symphonies, concertos, tone poems, etc.) or solo piano works; like sonatas, preludes, Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, and so on.

If anyone has some favorite chamber music that they'd like to recommend I'd love to hear it.

Chamber music was invented and created by some of the best of all time. Any of Haydn's string quartets are essential (he basically created the string quartet.) If you want a nice intimate listen, you can't go wrong with a string quartet. Some composers that wrote some great ones include Schubert, Shostakovich, Mozart, Beethoven and Bartók. Schubert also wrote some Lieder which is a vocal duet (voice and piano.) Schubert also wrote his "Trout Quintet" for the uncommon instrumentation of a violin, violla, cello, double bass and piano--he called it a Piano Quintet.

Any of the aforementioned composers also wrote some brilliant piano trios, Beethover wrote a series of five great string trios at the beginning of his career as well.

Debussy, Ravel and Faure all wrote some piano trios (violin, cello, piano). They are some of those composers' least known works, but for no good reason--they're really nice.

Check out the Florestan Trio's disc of these works. It's expensive new, but not too bad used. And it's recorded really well, sounds very lifelike, which is always a bonus. (It works for both SACD and normal CD players)

Thanks, I'll have to look into your suggestions. By the way, are either of you familiar with any good chamber music from Brahms?

Hmmm...I meant to mention some pieces by Brahms, besides his tremendously beautiful symphonies (which is what he is most known for) he also wrote some nice chamber pieces. As for specific pieces, there is a trio called Zwei Gesänge für eine Altstimme mit Bratsche und Pianoforte Op. 91, for Contralto, Viola and Piano, his trio Op. 114 for clarinet, cello and piano, the trio in Eb Op. 40 which is a nice horn trio, some great string sextets (try the Op. 18 and the Op. 36.)

Other than that, any of his chamber pieces are amazing. He wrote piano duets, trios, quartets and quintets, string quintets and many more.

I'm a Prokofiev fan myself. I think it's funny how people accuse Russians of being unemotional. Some of the most emotional music in history has come out of Russian culture.