Baby Mozart-Music to Stimulate Your Baby's Brain

Those who are skeptical of the classical-music-for-kids genre will surely scoff at these 15 Mozart selections, most of which are under two minutes. But these are clearly tracks created for the youngest of children, as the age-range recommendation of 1 to 36 months in the liner notes indicates. So the keyboard orchestrations, which veer unmistakably away from the organic sounds of an orchestra or acoustic instrumentation (except when a vibraphone or glockenspiel is present), might indeed sound tepid and washed out. But the ideal is to create an atmosphere in which an infant's sense of space and awareness of the interrelationships of sounds are stimulated. The music is lively and colorful but has a proscribed color range, which isn't the worst thing to have an infant exposed to. The accompanying video of the same name draws raves from Amazon.com customers for its ability to wow babies, and that, coupled with undeniable, aurally evident kinesis in the sound, make this at least an attractive item in the classical-for-baby catalog. --Andrew Bartlett