Search - Baby Einstein :: Baby Bach-Music to Stimulate Your Baby's Brain

The annals of postmodern parenting will be filled with documentation of the classical-for-babies movement, founded on the basis of research showing brain development when music is played (which has resulted in a robust catalog of available, inexpensively licensed or reproduced music). The Baby Einstein video company conjured a set of recordings (Baby Bach and its sibling Baby Mozart) based on videos that simply mesmerize small babies. Their Baby Bach video is a hoot for its seriousness and its impact on very young viewers. As for the CD, it's quite brief but not a whole lot less entertaining for the youngest listener. Recommended for children between 1 and 36 months, the set is all cushioning around Bach's counterpoint and rambunctiousness. Whereas Bach in an orchestral presentation can be riveting and bright, here the music is only slightly glowing, thanks to the washy keyboard. But the softness is intentional and meant not to intimidate or startle the youngest of ears. And somehow, perhaps to the chagrin of classical purists, this softer presentation seems to speak to children in ways that are hard to duplicate with original orchestral or acoustic performances. This is an age of reproduction, for sure, and these recordings are unabashedly reproductive, without regard to the shapes and colors of the originals. --Andrew Bartlett