What other composer "floats your boat"?

[Phoenix]

Obviously, for us here Mahler's music transports us to the gates of heaven.  I'm curious to know what other composer's compositions also transport you?

For me, there is:
Beethoven's Missa Solemnis
Dvorak's Requiem & Te Deum
Rachmaninov's Vocalise (Moffo w/Stokie)
Strauss 4 last songs (particular the Kiri/Davis performance of Beim Schlafengehen)
Vaughan-Williams Lark Ascending, Thomas Tallis Fantasy & 1st Sym (the last movement could easily stand on it's own)
Bruckner's Te Deum
Sibelius' 2nd Sym.

There's more, but this is a good start.  Et vous?
Lloyd

[BeethovensQuill]

alongside Mahler, Bach, Beethoven and Brahms hold very special places in my listening.  Also Scriabin, Respighi, Sibelius, Ravel, Vaughan Williams, Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Elgar, Poulenc, R Strauss, Bruckner, Korngold, Vasks, Szymanowski (particular symphony 3 and that whole disc Rattle made), Shostakovich, Prokofiev, i could go on with a few more

[chalkpie]

I'll play...

I don't buy the whole Heaven thing, but some of my favorite composers that take me to places both beautiful and scary and everything in between are:

Dowland
Tallis
Playford Songbook
Bach
Beethoven
Wagner
Debussy
Satie
Ives
Schoenberg
Webern
Mahler
Ravel
Stravinsky
Varese
Copland
Shostakovich
Ligeti
Lutoslawski
Bartok
Messiaen
Stockhausen
Carter
Cage
Cowell
Partch
Schnittke
Boulez
Kurtag
Xenakis
Zappa

[wagnerlover]

First for me, Wagner, obviously.

But also Beethoven, Stravinsky, Verdi, Kern, Rodgers. 

And many others. 

Thank god it's not fattening!

db

[stillivor]

Beethoven, Bruckner, Dvorak, Schubert, Haydn, Prokofiev, Nielsen

A lot of Shostakovich, Alkan, Brahms, Berwald, Weinberg, Chopin, R-K, Franck, early Stravinsky, Gershwin, Kern, Porter, Warren, Arlen, Carmichael, Rodgers, Berlin, Scriabin symphonies, Debussy's La mer and Faune, Ravel,  Mozart, Britten, Tchaikovsky, Poulenc, Sibelius

Liszt's Faust symphony, Ibert's Divertissement, Kancheli's A Little Daneliade, Honegger's 3rd, Roussel's 3rd, Messiaen's Turangalila, Hindermith's Symphonic metamorphoses, Luigini's Egyptian ballet, Dohnanyi's Suite in F, Maxwell davies' Farewell to Stromness, Walton's 1st and Facade, Khatchaturian's Sabre Dance, Enescu's 1st Rumanian Rhapsody, Chabrier's Espana, Bizet's Carmen,


   Ivor

[techniquest]

There are a few other pieces that can take me almost to the 'gates of heaven'; at least as a musical analogy...Among them are the following:

Scriabin - Poem of Ecstacy
Rachmaninov - Symphonic Dances
Stravinsky - Firebird
Janacek - Sinfonietta
Vaughan Williams - Symphony No.2
Ravel - La Valse

[waderice]

I have numerous composers and their works that I really enjoy (too numerous to list here), but I will say that the one composer who has taken me the longest to learn to gain an appreciation of is Sibelius.  I used to use his Second Symphony as my reference, but as I've listened to more performances of his Fifth, it's that work by him that I latch on to (the revised version).  I read somewhere that Mahler detested Sibelius' music, incidentally.

I just returned from a visit to Scandinavia, and while in Norway, I visited the Grieg home (called Troldhaugen) and museum while in Bergen.  At the museum store, I bought an 8-CD set of all the orchestral music by Grieg, on the BIS label, performed by the Bergen Philharmonic conducted by Ole Kristian Ruud.

BTW, I just checked my four volumes of the de la Grange biography of Mahler, and I found no instance of Mahler and Grieg ever having met (Grieg died in 1907, so the possibility existed that could have happened), but I have confirmed that Mahler did perform a very short list of Grieg's works.

Wade