^^ Superb post. Tons for me to explore there, too! Dunno why I didn't mentioned Shostakovich's string quartets myself, as I really like those.

Glad I could help you too!

anyone have any recommendations for highly intense classical? I really enjoy classical but I am not into fluffy Nutcracker type classical. It doesn't necessarily have to be dark, just something with intense counterpoint and power.

To start, try Bach's Preludes and Fugues - the Well-Tempered Clavier. The fugues are especially contrapuntal. I don't have time to look up other stuff at the moment but I will certainly find more and post here later :)

Pretty much any of Beethoven's later works are extremely intense. I'd recommend specifically checking out his last few piano sonatas and string quartets. Here's two pretty well known ones:

The Appasionata Sonata, movement I


This is the last movement of his last string quartet, his last published work:


During the Romantic period, many composers were creating extremely intense pieces. One of my favorites being Liszt, he composed some of the most technically challenging yet beautiful piano pieces. Here's an example:

Beethovens moonlight sonata...amazing piece, I used to be able to play it all the way through...once upon a time!

Ludovico Einaudi - Primavera
 

Very similar to Michael Nyman, but thats not a bad thing!!

Beethoven - Symphony No.7 in A major op.92 - II, Allegretto - Always one of my favourites, was well used in the Kings Speech

Could anyone suggest a decent album/compilation (could be of various artists or just one artist)? I've somewhat neglected this genre of music and my taste is only limited to Isaac Albeniz, Tchaikovsky, and Dvorak. It could be modern or older compositions (not picky).

I can definitely recommend stuff to you. I suggest starting with a compilation, that way you get the best music from every musical period. I believe a lot of stuff that is for sale on Amazon is also available in a store, if you don't like/can't do shopping online. But check this out anyways: Amazon.com: Classical Compilations.

From those selections, I would suggest compilations similar to this: Amazon.com: 25 Classical Favorites: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky, Antonio Vivaldi, Johannes Brahms, Frederic Chopin, Johann II [Junior] Strauss, Johann Sebastian Bach, Georges Bizet, George Frederick Handel, Maurice Ravel, S. There are some other ones in this series that feature different music so I recommend checking those out too. They all have a similar cover so they're not hard to find.

If you prefer to shop on iTunes with a gift card, I HIGHLY recommend this: Classical Music News: 24 Hours of Classical Music From Naxos on iTunes. I purchased this compilation about a year ago and I love it. It's only about $10 as well, and you're getting over 300 pieces of music, including Handel's Messiah in it's entirety. What I like about it is that the music is drawn from every important musical period in history, from Medieval until the 20th century. If you like to burn CD's, it's pretty easy to split this one into playlists that will fit on the disc.

Out of the two that I've suggested, I strongly recommend the one from iTunes. It's such a great deal!

Edit: The iTunes compilation gets all the music from the Naxos Music Library, and I invite you to check out their website as well: http://www.naxos.com/. They have some pretty good articles under the "Education" section in the sidebar on the right :)