Hundreds of compilation recordings have been thrust on the market in recent years on the theory that classical music makes a nice, non-threatening accompaniment to everything from working out to making love. And here we have one compilation promising to make your baby smarter. It's offensive enough that the music featured on these compilations is spliced up so that the most you hear of any work is a single movement; what's really annoying is the poor quality of so many of the featured performances. So it is some consolation that the artists here include such 20th-century legends as the Cleveland Orchestra under Szell and the Budapest String Quartet with Mieczyslaw Horszowski. Of course if these folks were alive, one can imagine their violent objection to this presentation of their work. --Gwendolyn Freed
