Top 10 Must-have Classical CD's

Bomarc is 100% correct. It will reveal personal taste or NO taste when one cannot include Mozart in their recommendation.

Here are my favorites:

1. Beethoven: Symphonies 5 & 7, Carlos Kleiber, Vienna phil. Deutsche Grammophon #47400
2. Beethoven: Symphony #9, Szell/Cleveland, Sony Classical/National Public Radio Millennium
3. Holst, The Planets, Charles Dutoit / Montreal Symphony, London/Penguin Classic
4. Moussorgsky: Night on Bald Mountain; Pictures at an Exhibition, Maazel, Telarc
5. Mozart: Symp.40&41,Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra/Leonard Bernstein;Deutsche Grammophon 445 548-2
6. Tchaikovsky: 1812 Overture, Cincinnati & Erich Kunzel (Telarc/CD80041)
7. Brahms: Sym’s # 2 & 3 Columbia Symphony Orchestra, Bruno Walter, Sony SMK 64471
8. Mahler: Symphony no. 2 (Resurrection) Otto Kemperer EMI
9. Brahms, Ein deutsches Requiem (A German Requiem), Robert Shaw, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. Telarc CD-80092
10. Vaughan Williams: Symphonies # 7 & 8, Bakels / Bournemouth Symphony, Naxos (8.550737)

I'm not into classical, but my friend just turned me on to the disc Aaron Copland, The Populist. It is very well recorded, and I liked the music also.

Eldragon, I agree on Mozart. Mozart, Requiem; take any Bohm, Klemperer, even the old Karajan.
On taste, I beg to disagree slightly: Edd states he's new to the gendre so rather than "personal taste" I think that "impressive", "likely to hook", "representative" & similar are more appropriate words. Cheers

Thanks everone thus far.
As Gregm aptly notes: "I think that "impressive", "likely to hook", "representative" & similar are more appropriate words." is exactly what I am hoping for.

Of course taste always enters into these things. With a wide variety of responses as thus far I hope to get things staretd so that eventually I too will have my own tastes.

Again, thanks thus far,

All the best