Review: Naxos' Smart Early Music Collection

This 30-CD box, offered at a very attractive price, provides the finest available early music sampler on any label. You get everything from Gregorian chant, through the origins of polyphony, the music of the medieval troubadours, and the rise of instrumental music for the guitar family, keyboards, brass and strings. It's 500 years of music in a nutshell--or rather, an attractive and sturdy box, excellently performed and vividly engineered. Of its kind, you can't do better.