Mining classical music gold.

@billsw To add a few more historically significant pianists, to make you life more difficult:

William Kapell, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, Emil Gilels, Dinu Lipatti.

To get a list to last a lifetime Google Wikipedia for Russian Classical Pianists!  

@rvpiano -- thanks for a useful reminder that there’s way more than just "new releases" to consider in classical music. FWIW, it has always been thus. 

I listen to new recordings and young performers all the time. Sometimes they’re spectacular; many other times they don’t quite measure up to the best of previous generations of interpreters. I always think, "I’ll check back with you in 20-30 years and see what you’ve learned," not that I actually have 20 or 30 years. 

Since you have "piano" in your screen-name, a related point about piano recordings (there are so many 1000s of them, new interpretations every month). I learned years ago to check out any piece of piano literature that interests me by looking for interpretations by Martha Argerich and/or Michaelangelo Benedetti. Each had their specialties (MB in particular), but in general, these are players who never seemed to have a bad day or a lack of insight about anything they recorded. Much of the time their versions of things just tower over even the best later-generation players. For me, those 2 pianists are a useful starting point to understand an extremely crowded field of piano recordings....

@mahgister Sincere thanks for the reference to the Dorati Liszt Christus.  I had never heard this magnificent work previously.  A glorious recording with wonderful soloists and orchestra.

I am now hooked on finding more Liszt.

@desktopguy 

Good suggestions.

My two go-to pianists are somewhat more controversial and indeed two one of a kind:  Vladimir Horowitz and Glenn Gould.  Great thinkers with transcendent technique.  Perhaps not the best starting points though.

@rvpiano -- Glenn Gould is the obvious starting point for Bach keyboard peformances. It's such an ingrained habit that I nearly forgot it.

But somehow Mr. Horowitz and I never had a meeting of the minds.