Quasthoff, Thomas

▪ 2004

      Bass-baritone Thomas Quasthoff made his opera debut in April 2003, singing the role of Don Fernando in a production of Beethoven's Fidelio with Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic at the Grosses Festspielhaus in Salzburg, Austria. For any other singer, the event would have been a momentous musical watershed, but in Quasthoff's case it was also a triumph of the human spirit over immense adversity and a lifetime of struggle.

      When Quasthoff was born—on Nov. 9, 1959, in Hildesheim, Ger.—he was severely disabled, the result of his mother's having taken the drug thalidomide during her pregnancy. He spent his first year in a cast to correct a right foot that faced backwards. Nothing however, could be done to fix his arms, which barely extended beyond his shoulders. For the next six years, he was confined in a residential institution for severely disabled children. Quasthoff had also been born with a voice like few others, however, a voice that would grow over the years into an instrument of singular power and emotion and one that with cultivation would make him a worldwide musical phenomenon.

      Quasthoff began his vocal training in 1972 with Charlotte Lehmann in Hannover, Ger. Refused entry into a music conservatory because his disabilities precluded playing an instrument, he studied law for three years and spent his spare time singing with jazz bands. He became a great admirer of Frank Sinatra. Quasthoff's classical music career got its start in 1988 when he won first prize in the ARD International Music Competition in Munich, Ger. Two years later he ended his studies with Lehmann and took a day job as a radio announcer in Hannover. He began to move into the spotlight in 1996 when he won the Shostakovich Prize in Moscow and the Hamada Trust/Scotsman Festival Prize at the Edinburgh International Festival. The next year Quasthoff made his concert debut with Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic, performing Haydn's The Creation. Success began to build upon success, leading to his first engagement with the New York Philharmonic, singing Gustav Mahler's Des Knaben Wunderhorn.

      The acclaim that attended Quasthoff's performances yielded a recording contract with the Deutsche Grammophon label in 1999, and he proved to be an immediate sensation. His initial recording, of Des Knaben Wunderhorn, with Anne Sofie von Otter and the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Claudio Abbado, won a Grammy Award in 2000.

      Over the next three years, Quasthoff became one of the world's preeminent classical music artists, touring the U.S. and Europe, performing with major orchestras and conductors, and appearing at summer music festivals. His 2000 recording of lieder by Brahms and Liszt won a Cannes (France) Classical Award. Quasthoff was scheduled to make his Vienna State Opera debut in 2004, singing the role of Amfortas in Wagner's Parsifal.

Harry Sumrall

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