Sony’s Ambitious Boxed Set: the Century’s Top 547 Tunes : Classical

What does it tell you to hear an aging Eubie Blake play a rag followed by a sterling Rudolf Serkin playing a Brahms Intermezzo followed by a young Yo-Yo Ma playing a short, fast movement from a Haydn Cello Concerto followed by New Age harpist Andreas Vollenweider playing one of his soapy compositions followed by Placido Domingo and John Denver singing “Perhaps Love” and so on over 80 selections on four CDs? Absolutely nothing, other than that you might be in a neighborhood coffee bar. And that Sony Classical owns the great Columbia back catalog and can do anything it wants with it.