I too can credit recorded music with bringing me to the classics.
When I was a toddler, we had a pre-stereo phonograph and not many
records, but to this day I can whistle Tchaikovsky's entire
Symphony #4, with "Bing, bing" for the cymbal crashes.  But it
broke, and we did without for a long time.
 
Later, I was a wise-ass hot-shot high school trumpet player (well,
ok, I was in the orchestra, too, but we never played anything
baroque) when an upperclassman gave me a record of Michael
Schneider ripping apart a number of big Bach organ pieces.  He
told me "This is cool; check it out."  (He'd bought the record
with a book of green stamps!)
 
The first time I played it, it sounded like utter chaos.  But the
guy, whose taste I respected, had said it was cool, so I kept
playing it.  And you know, after four or five playings I began to
hear what was happening--fugues and everything, man!  He was
right: it WAS cool.  I joined the Musical Heritage Society, which
was all baroque in those days, and then moved on to Martin Galling
and others I'm ashamed to admit now, and now, damned if I don't
have my own harpsichord.  How I wish I could play it!
 
My daughters, college graduates, are both amateur keyboardists, by
the way.  They started lessons at age four.  One developed
absolute pitch and the other has relative pitch, and they love
most all kinds of music.  Get 'em early--that's the key.  But how
to effect that?
 
Al Past