It's a glowing review indeed, and reading it on the net, it's impressive.
However, reading it in the actual newspaper, in situ, so to speak, casts
a slightly different perspective.  The Guardian runs a section devoted to
selling CD's, just as the Times runs a venture selling books they review,
and The Independent sells garden furniture!  Selling news alone isn't the
thing these days to make money.  Therefore, nearly all the reviews done in
this section are impressive for a reason, but it's not at all obvious from
reading it on the net.

DG is running a massive push on Quasthoff at the moment, pulling out
all the stops.  A recent edition of Gramophone featured a long article,
complete with interviews.  The actual review, hidden in the body of the
magazine, was more objective.  It's interesting to compare the article
to the DG press release.  I've nothing against press releases, which are
useful when they're informative and well written (which this one was) but
it bothers me how big marketing campaigns influence us.  DG built Fscher
Dieskau into a colossus whose domination of the market continues.
Quasthoff is a marketing managers dream but, much as I love him, I
wonder what the long term effect may be.

Best regards, Anne
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