NEW MUSIC

Try buying a copy of the Gramophone Classical Good CD Guide and reading it :-) This is not just like reading the telephone book. Many of Gramophone's editors are musicologists, and the discussions under any given composer's work often describe the style as well as the recordings available. I've found a surprising amount of good music this way.

Also, I enjoy having reference books that can occasionally supply some context around styles. One such tome is Robert P. Morgan's "Twentieth Century Music" (Norton, 1991) but I'm sure there are others if you rummage through Borders or Barnes and Noble. Eggheaded, I know.

There have been so many style progressions in the 20th century. A few favorites of mine:

-Berg String Qt. and Lyric Suite for String Qt. (by the Alban Berg Qt.)
-Lutoslawski String Qt. (by the Alban Berg Qt)
-for other string quartets contemporary with Bartok but not similar in style, the quartets of Shostakovitch (Emerson Qt) and Zemlinsky (Artis Qt)

And if you like orchestral work,
- Lutoslawski's Mi Parti and Musique Funebre
- most of the orchestral works of Thomas Ades
- the idiosyncratic and non-atonal works of Rautavaara, such as Cantus Arcticus
- John Tavener's Lamentations and Praises, sung by Chanticleer. Tavener has been progressing away from strict minimalism and combining other elements, as Gregm says

Agon, thank you for your kind words. I have been learning from this thread too...out hunting for more Schnittke and Segerstam. Exchange of music is one of the best aspects of Audiogon.

Schubertmaniac, thanks for the Voci II recommendation, I didn't know there was a 2nd volume out!

Kim Kashkashian has also done most of the Giya Kancheli series on ECM, along with a Schnittke concerto, all of which I enjoy very much. Manfred Eicher seems to keep pulling in extraordinary players, like Rostropovitch, Kashkashian, and Gidon Kremer (not to mention his whole contemporary jazz roster, which belongs in another thread).