A review from
The New York Times book review section Oct. 12 about German singer Thomas Quasthoff's memoir,
The Voice: A Memoir, which has just been translated into English:
Thomas Quasthoff is one of the finest singers of art songs, or lieder, in recent decades, and of oratorios and the very occasional opera as well. He is beloved by his admirers but not widely known outside Germany, or at least outside the main international centers of classical music. One of the Three Tenors he is not.
But for him to project his image to the wider world confronts him with a particularly sensitive problem. A victim of thalidomide poisoning, he is 4 feet 3 inches tall, with a normal head and torso but vestigial legs, hands and feet. He suffered sadistic experiences as a child, perpetrated by a society that wanted to shut him and other disabled people out of sight, out of mind, even out of earshot.
He triumphed, as an artist and a person. Yet understandably he does not want to be known as a gnome or a dwarf — as he sometimes refers to himself in “The Voice,” his complex and touching memoir — who happens to sing. He wants to be admired as an artist, not a human-interest freak.
And he should be. Quasthoff has a mellifluous bass baritone (more and more drifting down toward the bass end of the spectrum) with deeply felt musical instincts and a radiant artistic intelligence. His musical tastes extend far beyond the mid-European Bach-to-modernism repertory in which he specializes, all the way to jazz and rock. In concert, his easy onstage manner wins over anyone who might otherwise be distracted by his looks.
Reflecting his stardom in his native country, “The Voice” appeared in Germany four years ago, and there was also a two-CD album on Deutsche Grammophon and a documentary television film, all with the same title. The English-language version comes with a brief postscript to update his story, the key points being that he married his girlfriend, made a jazz album, received a fresh clutch of awards and is booked to 2015.
“The Voice” is a friendly read, especially for those who already know and admire Quasthoff and his artistry. It has some flaws, but they don’t detract from the overall charm, flecked with pain. The English is unidiomatically, sometimes inaccurately, translated from edited material recorded by his brother, Michael. Quasthoff tries so hard to come across as a regular guy — he’s forever downing beers with his cronies — that one wishes for more about the music he makes. But he may well be a regular guy.
Many of the references are to German cultural and entertainment figures barely known outside that country; Quasthoff is undoubtedly more erudite than he chooses to let on here. His love for classic jazz and even rock ’n’ roll — reflected in his English-language jazz album, which didn’t get much traction in the United States, the birthplace of jazz — is never really linked to the classics and how he interprets them.
He stresses the need for a solid technique, but breezes past interpretive niceties — except for overlong opera-plot summaries for those few roles (the static Don Fernando in “Fidelio”; the tortured, wounded Amfortas in “Parsifal”) that have seemed suitable for him to sing onstage. Sometimes he gushes, as when he mentions the “brilliant” acoustics of Avery Fisher Hall.
Quasthoff is certainly correct that at this late date his singing and his artistry should be considered separately from his disability — unless you speculate, as he does not, on how the pain he has experienced must have deepened his artistry. But his life story is inextricable from that disability.
Which, by and large, through determination and an improbably sunny disposition, Quasthoff seems largely to have accepted. Occasionally bitterness creeps in, as in his rage at the company that marketed thalidomide (“guaranteed without side effects”) or at the sadism of some early therapists and teachers or at the fixation of the entertainment media on his afflictions.
He works to overcome his resentment of envious musicians “who believed I got things only because I was different.” He resents “being presented as a model handicapped person,” given how his life has been uniquely elevated above those of so many others. By the end, he tells us he has learned “to accept my physical deficits as fact, much as others see their bunions.”
Quasthoff had help in getting to where he is today, aside from talent and discipline. He had a loving father and mother and brother and girlfriends, and he found teachers who recognized his talent. He worked hard, he won prestigious competitions, he made his New York debut, he was taken up by powerful champions (like the Berlin
Philharmonic conductors Claudio Abbado and Simon Rattle). His life became a golden road of triumphant international engagements. “The Voice” is full of breezy anecdotes and set pieces about famous colleagues and the pleasures and aggravations of life on the road — the kind of cheerful backstage gossip music fans adore.
“Luck has never been shy with me,” Quasthoff proclaims. And after this tale of initial terrible luck, then pain, then triumph, you believe him.
A review from The New York Times book review section Oct. 12 about German singer Thomas Quasthoff's memoir, The Voice: A Memoir, which has just been translated into English: