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I am sorry that it took me so long to respond to yours and many other questions here but unlike most of the people who have the time to post here because they are unemployed, I have a DAY JOB and have to WORK for a living. This is not a value judgment by any means, but a conclusion based on observation.

To answer your question, this is like asking a man who drinks water what kind of water does he like to drink!  There are so many kinds of water that this is impossible to begin to describe.  For simplicity I will try to limit what I listen to to some of my favorite composers if this is of any help to you.  I am a great fan of the works of in no particular order Benjamin Britten, Johann Strauss, Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Grieg,Brahms, Sergei Prokofiev, Dvorák, Haydn, Robert Schumann, Arthur Honegger,Tchaikovsky, Aram Khachaturian, Bruckner, Weber, Mussorgsky etc etc etc!!!!!!

I also have a very soft spot in my heart for the great Hungarian composers including the stupidly underrated Zsigmond Szathmáry, Kodály, Bela Bartok, Paul Abraham and Ferenc Farkas, particularly in his unique interpretations/utilization of Schoenberg’s dodecaphonic techniques, and Vincent Adler (although finding someone to properly to interpret his virtuosic compositions and pianistic muse is VERY difficult.

This does not mean that I listen exclusively to classical but I listen to it quite often however do not limit myself to it by any means and for very good reason. I will explain.

Let us take the example of piano. When speaking of virtuosity, many classical-only listeners who listen to Sviatoslav Richter, Josef Hofman, Busoni or Paderewski for example, and who think that these classical pianists are the last word in pianistic virtuosity are SADLY MISTAKEN.  In fact nothing could be further from the truth.  Believe me when I say this as I graduated with honors in composition and performance from The Juillard School.

If you are a limited only to classical listener who doesn’t just sit there drooling while following the notes with a stupid look on this face and instead decides to compare what he’s heard contextually with, to take a simple view, the contrapuntal coalescence of a great jazz pianist like Lenny Tristano or Thelonius Monk who understand meter and modal shift and tonal subtlety on a level that someone like Richter for example could only dream of, then you will have come to an understanding about music and its performance intricacies that few who listen ONLY to classical music will ever attain in his lifetime.

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