Consumer Guide Album

Classical Hits [Sony Classical, 2001]
OK, so there's more Yo-Yo channeling more Bach and Wynton Marsalis doing what comes naturally and Andre Rieu feeling much love for Strauss, That Louse. But there's also three tenors and three sopranos and a refined orchestration of a Bernstein opus owned by Carol Lawrence and Bond's platinum-plated va-va-voom chamber music and pantheon poachers Horner, Zimmer, Williams, and Lloyd Webber. There is, in short, a soi-disant great tradition with its pants down, and is that a baton in its jockeys or is it just overdoing the Viagra? Not Bach's fault, or Yo-Yo Ma's. Not even capitalism's fault. But you have to ask yourself just exactly what kind of repository of All That Is Highest in Western Civilization it is that remains so susceptible to the brummagem, the bathetic, the half-assed, and the utterly full of shit. C-