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For about the last 10 years I used to find most of what Mozart wrote pretty boring (especially the piano sonatas), with only few exceptions like the Requiem. The same, though to a lesser degree, was true for Haydn. I used to say, at every party, how overrated Mozart is :p

Now I am listening his piano concertos up and down and cannot get rid of it anymore (listing to #23 (Perahia) right now). Suddenly I am thrilled when I hear Richter or Kissin play a Haydn sonata!

When I started listening seriously to (classical) music 10 or 12 years ago I was at first attracted mainly by Tchaikosvky, Rachmaninoff, Chopin and some other romantic stuff. The older I get, the more the repertoire I like grows, at first to more romantic composers and Beethoven and Schubert, then more modern composers like Prokofiev and Ravel. Now I am also beginning to appreciate contemporary composers like John Adams or Corigliano and - as I said - finally I am also seriously getting into Mozart, Haydn and Scarlatti. Somewhat surprisingly (and luckily), I still like my early favorites as much as I did 10 years ago, though.

This is great

Any similar experiences?

Klaus

Well i've experienced this with individual pieces, i guess as my musical understanding matured i saw them in different ways.

when i first started listening to music there were several pieces that i listened to them and didn't like at all.However, several months later as i would continue getting more into piano, i would listen to the same piece again and it would be the most beautiful and astonishing thing i'de ever heard. I could never really understand how it changes, but i know why.

Yes, very similar experience.

I bought my first classical record when I was 14. It was Rachmaninoff's 2nd piano concerto, then Rhapsody on a theme by Paganini. I was totally into the Romantics throughout high school (much teenage angst), edging my way into Debussy and Ravel when I was 17-18, then expanded forward through Berg and Schoenberg from 18-21, then backward through Beethoven to Mozart and Haydn from 21-25. Bach was always there, hovering above it all. While my taste for other composers has waxed and waned, my fondness for Bach has continued to grow slowly and steadily.

I started out like most people, i.e. I loved Chopin and some Liszt and everything else was boring. Well, in the last year or two, I've opened up to just about every single musical period or movement in classical music. It's great, I would be bored to death if I were still listening to Chopin Etudes over and over again like I used to.
I know a lot of pianists who are really good, but it's all completely wasted on Chopin. They devote every ounce of their playing to him. If they have to learn someone Baroque or Classical for a competition, then they learn the notes and botch it because they don't care. Chopin's a magnificant composer, but he's not the only one.

i guess that everyone goes through some changes on taste during life time. but to me, the only one hasn't been changed is Beethoven. i like him from the beginning (when i heard his Fur Elise for the first time), was thrilled by his piano sonatas - moonlight, pathetique, waldestein and appassionata (only the few sonatas i had ever known for quite a long time), all his piano concertos, and of course his symphonies. the slow movement (or funeral march) of his 7th symphony once filled in my mind and i couldn't get enough of the theme and the multi-voice layers of that. still i like everything (almost) he wrote till present days. i only started to listen his lesser known sonatas a few years back, and was attracted to or moved by every one of them. i only realized then what i have missed of his works in my earlier years, and there was too much i actually didn't know and still don't know all. this is what i call the greatest composer, because he draw your heart and mind to his music and continue to do so until you die. no other composers have such impact on me as Beethoven did, although Bach is the closest 2nd.

Strange how it seems everyone (most of my friends included) started out liking the romantics and slowly working their way backwards. For me it was the opposite, I started with the classical and baroque and have slowly been inching my way upward (still don't really like late romantic period).