Been listening to a track by the Balanescu Quartet that I downloaded from the site by the guy with the spider behind his toilet. It's a cold, austere, moody 20th Century work for string quartet that has an almost cinematic quality to it (in fact, speaking voices murmur in the background behind the strings). At 3.30 in the morning, it makes for an ideal Stolichnaya moment, but I have no Stoli here in the hovel, so the point is academic.
(OK, I know Balanescu sounds more like a Romanian name, and therefore would not be Russian. Feel free to substitute any potato-based spirit from a former Eastern Bloc country of your choice.)
Also playing via my notebook PC is a piano work by Jancek that I downloaded from ersatz-sprocket. While lacking the touch of frost endemic to the Balanescu piece, it has a hushed, pondering quality that also makes for good early a.m. listening.
I'm kind of funny about my classical music. I like it either really new (20th Century minimalist works) or really old (Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque). Something about the austere quality of both (all?) styles really appeals to me aesthetically. The sound is stripped down, yet still manages to be complex -- I can follow a piece as a whole or dissect individual parts in my head.
As I mentioned previously, there are a number of 20th Century, Experimental, and similar works available for download at Epitonic.
I can vouch for the John Adams piece that they have available -- it's an excerpt from a work of his called Shaker Loops (I have a full recording of it on CD) that has a wonderful, ethereal, shimmering quality to it. There's also some stuff by Shostakovich (get out the Stoli for this), Stockhausen, John Cage, or, for something a bit more contemporary, Harold Budd.
Speaking of John Cage, there's a post over at Elegant Hack about his tale of translating a haiku from Japanese to English. Also worth a listen.