Is where I would recommend anyone venturing into contemporary classical from other genres. Some key works:

Drumming
Music for 18 Musicians
Different Trains
Tehillim
The Desert Songs

Philip Glass I have grown a bit less fond of over time, steer clear of his symphonies but I can recommed his film soundtrack work;
Koyaanisqatsi and sequels
Mishima
etc
and the compilation album Glassworks has much of his best work.

I would also add John Adams and Arvo Pärt. If you want something that I've heard described as 'neo classical' (i.e. a mix of classical and electronic) then I would thoroughly recommend Jóhann Jóhannsson.

John Cage

BBC Radiophonic Workshop

(1866 – 1925). Pretty much invented 'Ambient', nearly a century before Eno. You've probably heard his Trois Gymnopedies, so start with that and continue!

Good call by trevelyan wright on Glass's Koyaanisqatsi too.

Strange but true: Philip Glass occasionally babysitted me when he came over to England. I'll never forget his bedtime stories: "Once upon a time, once upon a time, once upon a time, once upon a time..."

music influences I'd add Satie

Stravinsky

I think you should also check out some of jazz guys. Miles Davis' In A Silent Way from the 60s has noticeable ideas that have been picked up in electronic music:

Musique Concrete (which includes John Cage)

Edgar Varese - Poeme Electronique

Karlheinz Stockhausen

Some soundtrack stuff as well in addition to BBC Radiophonic

Louis and Bebe Barron - Forbidden Planet:

Wendy/Walter Carlos - The Shining/ Clockwork Orange

None of those in the pop world - nooooooo :-)

I'd take a listen to Vaughan Williams and Elgar - any arrangement that tries to summon up a sense of Englishness is invesitably indebted to one of other of these. Think Lilac Time, Robert Kirby

on the back of a stamp, but over the past year I've acquired some Beethoven, Mozart, Holst, Barber, Shostakovich and Berlioz and 'The Planets' is comfortably my favourite work at the moment, especially that bit in 'Jupiter'. Any 'if you like this, try this' recommendations would be appreciated.

I'll admit to not having absorbed the above purchases to their fullest, but 'The Planets' managed to grab me from the beginning.

I have just started litening to the Leyland kirby record - Sadly, the Future Is No Longer What It Was and it is truly wonderful and sad music, also very long at over 4hours.

A good start in to modern classical is Max Richter - either The Blue Notebook or Songs From Before.

Max Richter "Song"

Is very good in a Michael Nyman without the awkward bits kind of way. Divenire is lovely.

I can recommend the violin sonatas of Heinrich Biber as performed by John Holloway on the 2 ECM recordings "Unam Ceylum" and "Die Türken Anmarsch". Absolutely top-notch stuff.

Modern classical is really well represented on emusic, via Naxos and other labels. You also get great bangs for your credits as many pieces are only a couple of separate tracks.

(someone's already mentioned this above)

This is a purely genius piece of music. I'm not ashamed to admit that I first got into it because it sounds like Star Wars! But that's actually a good comparison: a lot of John Williams' incidental music (I don't mean the upbeat anthems in particular, the atmospheric stuff as well) sounds a LOT like The Planets.

After years of loving it, I finally saw it performed live last year in Glasgow and it blew me away. One of the "lesser" movements, Venus, is now my favourite one.

Thank you so much for your wonderful suggestions, and will click through the links tonight.

I've been seriously into classical music for 40 years, and it would be great to be in the position you are: I would love to recapture my first time of hearing so much wonderful music. As it is, I doubt whether I'll ever hear anything truly new again.

I won't make any suggestions, as I don't know your tastes - I don't mean in genre, but in style: dissonant/consonant, regular/irregular pulse, no pulse at all, vocal, orchestral, chamber, song cycles (which don't 'begin again' as Mr Costello believes). There will something there which will suit you, and there are many good recommendations above - once you've tried them out, maybe you could tell us which you preferred, and we can all expand from there.

Now, I will have to go off and explore Leyland Kirby, of whom I'd never heard before.

Happy listening!

...and was brought up by two (for want of a better term) "classical" music nuts. I was also a cathedral chorister from the ages of 7 to 13, and that's about the most intensive classical music education there is, so I'm pretty well versed.

I love renaissance choral music - Tallis, Palestrina, Vittoria, Byrd, Lassus, Allegri. Here are three of the most beautiful pieces of music ever composed:

There's plenty more where that came from!

... listen to the Bach cello suites. They're incredible - I used to play them a lot, and used movements from them for both my grade 8 and performance certificate exams. They're solo cello, completely unaccompanied, and the way the music almost seems to harmonise with itself is genuinely as close to a spiritual experience as this particular atheist ever gets. :)

Thanks must go to Ali Catterall & Ahh_Bisto for the Erik Satie recommendation and NickW for pointing me in the direction of Gerald Finzi.

I'll be researching the others to expand my range of options.

I know a few have pointed out my comments regarding pretention in music, but it was more a comment on the way Radio 3 presenters describe the intricacies of classical music - you just don't hear the other BBC radio channels being quite so analytical about the music they play (though many seem to have just woken up to the use of key changes). That's my fault for not being quite so clear about my meaning.

There are myriad recommendations I could make but will start with this one from Giovanni Gabrieli:

courtesy of Andrei Tarkovsky, who used Bach's Ich Ruf Zu Dir

and Erbame Dich

to stunning effect in Solaris and the Sacrifice respectively.