Low volume music

Tubes compress dynamics which clearly helps at low/med volume. I also enjoy my Quad subwoofer, which has a remote and four volume/crossover memories. At few DB boost at low volume can help a lot on some recordings.
I second the general notion that English loudspeakers are more likely to be low volume friendly by design than domestic production.

No question - 45 SET amp with nearfield speakers.

I am enjoying my Primaluna Prologue 2 with Reference 3a
De Capo i speakers . This set up is in a small room but the same principles apply for any size room , just gage your speaker size and amp power accordingly .
You want to look for highly resolving speakers that don't require too much power and are designed for tube use . Look for efficiency in the 90db. range with a fairly flat impedence curve .
Find an amplifier that has good micro details , extension and dynamics .
Your source will also be an important part of the set up . Here look for the same characteristics as the amp .
When auditioning , if it sounds better when you turn it up
it is not the system for your purpose .

Good luck .

Owning both tubed and solid state amps, I find that the tubes do perform better at lower volume levels than does MY solid state amp. My tubes are mono BATs and my solid state is a Mark Levinson 331.5 (BATs during the colder months, ML during A/C months).

I think a good combo is tubes with high efficiency speakers supported by a sub (even a small Q series from Rel) would help deliver a little umph at the bottom.

everyone can give suggetions all day long but what is comes down to is that you go to a dealer that knows what they are doing and have been in the business a long time. find someone you fell you can trust. then listen until your ears find something they cant live without. dont buy until you found exacly what you want