<< More Newsletter Articles
A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE
 |
| Quasthoff |
“What has 83 legs and three teeth?” singer Thomas Quasthoff slyly asked the audience at his recent Discovery Concert in Zankel Hall. After a pause for effect, the answer: “The first row of a concert in Vienna.”
In a multifaceted event titled Thomas Quasthoff and the Art of Song, a program of The Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall and part of Quasthoff’s season-long Perspectives, the German bass-baritone blended humor with analysis and performance in coaching young singers on everything from the basics of rhythm to the nuances of tonal expression. “It’s very important that an audience member, even if he or she doesn’t understand the words of a song, can get from the singer at least some idea of what it’s about,” he explained to one of the participants, who sang “Wenn ich in deine Augen seh’” from Schumann’s Dichterliebe. To demonstrate the desired effect, Quasthoff transformed his face into an expression of urgent longing and sang the phrase with a yearning tone.
But before a singer can sculpt the subtleties of a phrase, the basics have to be in place, including rhythm. “You don’t worry about the roof of a house until you’ve got a foundation,” Quasthoff offered as an analogy. “Rhythm is the foundation for music.” To illustrate the underlying rhythm in Schubert’s Winterreise, he paced the stage and sang the melodies of various songs in the cycle to the rhythm of his steps: “It’s a walking rhythm.”
Another enlightening aspect of this Discovery Concert was a discussion led by the new Dean of The Julliard School, Ara Guzelimian, in which Quasthoff reflected on some difficult moments in his career. He recalled making his 2004 operatic debut as Amfortas in Wagner’s Parsifal while his mother was in a coma. “That was very hard. Each time the phone rang, I waited to learn whether she was alive.” But he sang the role to great acclaim and fulfilled a lifelong ambition of singing opera.
An even more personal account of Thomas Quasthoff’s life and career came at an exclusive screening for Carnegie Hall Friends of Michael Harder’s documentary The Dreamer at the Museum of Modern Art on Sunday, March 4. Harder, who has been a friend of Quasthoff’s for almost 20 years, made extensive use of photos and footage to trace important steps in the singer’s story. A thalidomide survivor, Quasthoff was confined to an institution for part of his childhood. As a teenager, he was denied entry to a music conservatory that required all students to play the piano, an activity made impossible by the birth defects he had suffered. But he continued to study voice privately, and after winning the 1988 ARD music contest in Munich, his international career took off. He has since performed with the major pianists and orchestras of the world to tremendous critical acclaim. “I am a singer who happens to have a disability,” he has said, “not a disabled person who happens to sing”—and he’s amply proved his point.
He is also a singer who happens to be equally adept in jazz and classical idioms. Capping off his Perspectives with a March 7 concert in Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage titled An American Songbook, Quasthoff sang everything from Gershwin to Arlen to Mercer with a smooth grace reminiscent of Sinatra. “I’ve sung here many times, but tonight I am especially nervous,” the German singer admitted to the packed house, “because it is your language and your music.” Based on the warm response of the crowd that night and earlier that week, it’s safe to say that Thomas Quasthoff is a welcome guest in any language.