Hi, I am a very big classical music lover.

I am a big collector of Deutche Grammophone, EMI classics, Decca, Sony Classical, and Philips recordings of the Berlin Philharmonic and Vienna Philharmonic.

I am into conductors like Karajan, Bohm, Kleiber, Mehta, Bernstein, Maazel, Harnoncourt, Abbado, and Tennesdt.

I collect a variety of music from the 1700-1900 era, my favourite composer is beethoven, mozart, strauss, and tchaikovsky.


How about you guys?

I like classical music from the Baroque period.

BARTOK RADIO BUDAPEST - http://212.92.28.75:2008/listen.pls (320 kbit/s)
AVRO KLASSIEK - http://shoutcast.omroep.nl:8096/listen.pls (256kbit/s)
AVRO RADIO FESTIVAL CLASSIQUE - http://145.58.33.32:8148/listen.pls (256kbit/s)

Early music, especially from baroque period.
If someone is interested by a nice recording of Bach's Brandeburg Concertos on period instruments in FLAC format, it's here.

Early music, from the Notre Dame school (Pérotin, Léonin...) to the late baroque.

Lute music is my passion, especially Bakfark, Kapsperger, de Rippe, 17th c. French masters and Weiss.

I guess my favorites would be Mozart and Beethoven, in that order.

Thanks for the link! I have one of the zillions of Brandenburg sets on CD, but period instrumentation always makes baroque pieces sound nice and lean.

The following site has a suitably grim recording of Shostakovich's second piano trio, a piece I might wish to have played at my funeral:

http://trio.lifanovsky.com/mp3_eng.htm

I'm a big fan of 20th century composers. Schoenberg, Cage, Penderecki, Stockhausen, Glass, Reich, etc. Conlon Nancarrow's works for player piano are fantastic as well; I drool over the thought of owning the boxset. I'm also a big fan of impressionists in the vein of Debussy and Satie.

I'd have to say some of my favorite works I've heard lately have been Penderecki's St. Luke Passion and Stockhausen's Helikopter-Streichquartett.

Although I'm an early music fan, I really liked Messiaen's Turangalîla-Symphonie so I bought DGG's 1991 release performed by Yvonne Loriod and Orchestre de l'Opéra Bastille conducted by Myung-Whun Chung. It was recorded in the presence of the composer. Very nice CD and beautiful music.

I've heard that Messiaen has some great organ works which I'd be very interested in checking out. Know anything about those?

I know that he was an exceptional organist, but I've never heard his organ works.

Early on I favored program music and romantic music. As I have aged I have worked my way back in time to Baroque and also favor trios and quartets. The moderns, like Stravinsky and the modern Russians are stirring, but a good Beethoven or Schubert trio or quartet is very satisfying.

I've recently been going thru stuff downloaded from the BBC (legally, according to their online TOS), during their broadcast of the complete works of Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky 24 hours per day for one week in February. I always used to admire Stravinsky in a detached sort of way, preferring Prokofiev and Shostakovich among his immediate contemporaries, but after repeated "time-shifting", much of his stuff has now hit me like a tonne of bricks (his twelve-note period aside). Guess I'll have to raid the good ol' CD shop again.

It's a shame that, a year or two ago when they did the same with the complete works of J. S. Bach, I hadn't yet bothered to figure out RTSP. I was a fool, a fool! But every summer there are the complete broadcasts of the BBC Proms for consolation. I only recently had to time to get through all the 2006 broadcasts, so I've 2007's 72 Proms concerts for the listening. Life is good.

The BBC continues to amaze, and by broadcasting so much quality programming online and worldwide they've become more than just a national treasure.

(Purists might not tolerate 32k realaudio -- but it goes to show how irrelevant (relatively speaking) the quality of sound reproduction is next to the powerful effects that material of this standard can have.)

I LOVE BACH!!! BWV Double 997