I've loved music all my life and have listened to a lot of it throughout my life. For example, I'd estimate that during my 38-year-long full-time working career as a software engineer, I've listened to an average of 20 hours of music per week while working. At 46 work weeks per year, that multiplies out to 35,000 hours of listening, equivalent to 4 years of 24/7/365 listening. And that's just while working: I always have music on in the car, add in a few hours per week at home, add in all time in my younger days mowing the grass, etc.
I've explored several genres, and my favorites are Classic Rock (since that's what I grew up with), Progressive Rock (stuff like Yes through Transatlantic), Jazz (mainly Fusion, like Jean-Luc Ponty and Pat Metheny), and most of all, Classical Music (mainly Romantic and Post-Romantic/Modern).
I count 300 jewel cases remaining in my CD cabinet, have thrown away at least 500 vinyl albums, and have a 500-gigabyte MP3 collection on my computer of 14,000 folders, which amounts to about 5000 CDs. Yes, I've downloaded a lot of music, especially classical music while learning it and deciding what I liked and didn't like.
So here are a few lists of the music I enjoy the most. I'm hoping they might help someone who wants to explore Classical Music but doesn't know where to start. Or maybe someone will land here when they search for what people consider the best performance of some symphony or another, as I've done many times. Or maybe someone might discover some new favorite music after recognizing that their taste and mine overlap.