Sorry Blackspirit, I'm not a big fan of Piano, so I can't recommend much. If you want baroque music, I'd be all over that.
I adore most Bach, especially works on the organ. Yow!
Renaissance and Baroque era polyphonic choral music also holds a special place in my heart. This is where Palestrina, Monteverdi, and Bach are tremendous. Having sung in choir in high school, where we did a lot of music from masses and madrigals, it was just great how everything just fit together.
I also enjoy good orchestral works. Vivaldi, Mozart, Beethoven, Dvorak, Smetana are great. Now Vivaldi was a violin virtuoso and wrote great works for violin and orchestra and just some great orchestral works. Sadly, people only listen to the 4 seasons... which is a great piece, but it's "hard" to find a CD that DOESN'T have the 4 seasons so I can listen to something else.
Dvorak's New World Symphony is great, and Smetana's Ma Vlast is just beautiful (and one of the movements sounds like Hatikvah, the national anthem of Israel).
Note, most of this music is before 1750, after which it went to the romantic period and I lost nearly all interest in classical music. Exceptions are Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, Gershwin, a bit of Copland, and the sacred music of John Rutter. Modern classical, especially 12-tone, is crap to my ears.
Don't like Wagner, but I think that's a prejudice placed there by my parents.
Operas, I've seen decent amount, and I've forgotten too many. Don't like Carmen, but I ADORE The Magic Flute. Best Opera Ever.
Also liked Rigoletto, Barber of Seville, La Boheme, and that's all I can remember right now.
I've also recently been getting into classical music combined with a bit of techno. now I normally dislike techno quite a bit, but it ends up working quite well. Alas, I haven't been able to find too much, but so far I have Bond and Aria, and they're both great.
Oh yeah, forgot about my love of good classical guitar. Even here, just the pre-1700 music is good. After that, it gets to wierd and atonal.
OK, that's my thing for now.
Oh, and BS: thanks for posting that thread-link. It was a decent read.
