i listen to mostly prokofiev and rachmaninov as far as classical goes but also like beethoven, mahler, dankner, copland, bartok, dvorak, stravinsky, and some others.

no offense dude..but john williams steals a lot of his themes from older composers...he's the puff daddy of classical music...really not much to look up to. i love danny elfman but that's more because i'm a fan of his stuff with boingo...his movie compositions are more impressive because he doesn't know music at all and just composes it himself on his keyboard and his normal orchestrator is steve bartek from boingo.