This was my first time hearing Quasthoff live, and what an experience! In a season of many highlights - and the stunning Dmitri Hvorostovsky concert comes immediately to mind - I would say the Quasthoff recital qualifies as the number one Toronto musical event for me.
I chanced upon Margo Briessinck's wonderful webpage on Quasthoff the morning of the concert, so I was able to "bone up" on the program beforehand which really helped! This program will be repeated tomorrow in (I think) Washington DC.
Accompanied by Justus Zeyen - most sympathetically I might add, Quasthoff sang an unusual program of Brahms & Liszt in the first half, and Debussy and Ravel in the second. I find Quasthoff's voice just as it sounds on recordings except a bit mellower to my ears. It has such an incredible range, from very low basso profundo notes to high A flats. The Brahms songs are particularly grateful for low voices, and Quasthoff does them full justice. His "Wie bist du, meine Konigin" was exquisite. The three Liszt songs "Tre Sonetti di Petrarca" are very operatic, and usually sung by high voices. The last time I heard these were a year and a half ago at the Ben Heppner recital. I didn't think they would work well for a bass-baritone but in the hands of Quasthoff, it was pure magic. All three are loaded with high notes, and even with the transposition, I believe it went up to at least a G, if not A flat, in Benedetto sia i giorno. Quasthoff polished it off with aplomb.
He began the second half of French songs by speaking to the audiences - " I am sure you all speak perfect French...." which typically drew snickers from an English Canadian audience. Quasthoff went on to explain that if his French didn't sound right, it was because the text was written in 'old French', and not his fault. I am afraid he gave the audience too much credit when it comes to knowledge of French - he needn't have worried. I am not familiar with the Francois Villon songs, but the Don Quichotte songs by Ravel are very well known, and I recall hearing Jose van Dam and Thomas Hampson, among others, singing these in Toronto. Quasthoff is simply delightful in all three, but particularly the Drinking Song, complete with burp.
I find his stage manner to be very serious, almost tense. But when he chooses to speak to the audience, his personality comes through as vivid, warm, with a dry sense of humour. Quite unexpectedly, he spoke out against the imminent demise of the Ford Centre as a concert venue, due to the collapse of Livent (Garth Drabinsky's empire). As of now, there won't be any concert series there next season. Quasthoff appealed to the audience - and anyone listening 'out there' - to loosen their purse strings and save the concert hall - "...I would love to come back to sing here!" That little plug was much appreciated, and who knows, it might just have an effect. The audience adored him yesterday, with repeated standing ovations. But alas he only sang two encores. I do hope he will come back, if not at the Ford Centre, then at the less desirable, cavernous Roy Thomson Hall, which his huge voice would have no trouble filling.
Joseph So - 6-3-2000
I have listened to and enjoyed CD's of his (Mozart, Loewe, Schubert, Mahler), but to say I was impressed by his Sunday afternoon recital in Toronto would be an understatement. In fact, if you don't react well to rave reviews, you might do well to stop right here.
Program:
(By the way, what follows is from an enthusiastic listener without formal musical training, so any "musical terms" which sneak in should be interpreted (or not) from that perspective.)
I was impressed with the size and resonance of his voice, and it seemed to me to be under excellent control. It has a lovely quality which I guess could be described as "velvety." His stage manner is relaxed. His diction seemed excellent (and I'm a long-time fan of F-D). Judging by the comments he made to open the second half, his English is excellent. (I wish I'd been able to hear the War Requiem mentioned recently.)
And his singing ... well, I'd pay to listen to him sing anything he wanted to, frankly. He has no distracting mannerisms, and I seemed to sense his concentration as well as his enjoyment. I was caught up in the entire concert (as was my daughter (19)). She wanted to go backstage afterwards to thank him and have him sign a CD (the new Brahms/Liszt one which contains the first half of yesterday's program and which was being sold at the concert). I shouldn't pin it on her; I found that I wanted to say "thank you" as well. Both he and Zeyen were very relaxed and very accommodating.
I also enjoyed Justus Zeyen's contribution. He was not a reticent partner, and was able to "play out" with no danger of drowning Quasthoff.
There was comment in the list recently that criticized Quasthoff's singing of French literature. Well ... my most vivid memory of 'Don Quichotte' is of Souzay/Baldwin, and I enjoyed Quasthoff's Debussy/Ravel as much as I enjoyed Souzay's Schubert/Schumann ... a lot.
Audience reaction to the recital - they were called back for an additional bow after the first half; and got a prompt standing ovation at the end of the recital. Two encores - 'Es muss ein Wunderbares sein' (Liszt) and an arrangement of 'Swing Low, Sweet Chariot' that had a couple of low notes that made me think 'Sarastro.'
Overall, a memorable experience, and I find that I don't really want to "critique" it. I enjoyed it too much.
Scott Belyea - 6-3-2000
Force and emotion of Thomas Quasthoff's instincts enrapture audience
At George Weston Recital Hall
in Toronto, on Sunday
The first thing you note about the German bass-baritone Thomas Quasthoff -- that he bears the grave results of Thalidomide-induced birth defects -- is also the first thing you forget when he begins to sing. Then he takes you beyond his small body and into his spirit, which is a gigantic and profound space. From that conjunction of body and spirit, he produces music that will be hard to forget. It is as an artist that Thomas Quasthoff is truly out of the ordinary.
Most immediately striking is the amplitude of the voice, which is as big as it is beautiful. Rich, sensuous, resonant with feeling, Quasthoff's sound moves fluently from its sonorous depths to a gleaming, ringing top range. But the voice, a stunning instrument in itself, is brought fully into play through the force of the singer's interpretive instincts, his astounding technique, his expressive and dramatic authority. In Justus Zeyen, his wonderful pianist, he has found a colleague capable of a comparable chemistry of control and audacity.
They began with Johannes Brahms's nine Op. 32 Songs,which Quasthoff unified, emotionally, into an extended and sustained reflection upon the psychology of grief over a lost love. Wounded, bitter, Brahms's singer is subject to desperate hopes and dark dismissals, all of which, in this performance, were subtly interwoven with a bold mixture of recrimination and tenderness. In the final song, which contrasts the lost lover's blissful serenity with his own death-driven wishes, Quasthoff coloured the repetitions of the word wonnevoll ("blissful") with a gesture toward transcendence, while he swayed gently back and forth (he sings seated), as if to rock himself out of this life.
Throughout, he was superb at delving into the structure of the song cycles he performed. The rest of the concert featured a trio of three-song cycles, and in each, Quasthoff took us through the arc of both their poetry and music. Claude Debussy's Three Songs of François Villon and Maurice Ravel's Don Quichotte à Dulcinée were seductive worlds, exquisitely captured. In Franz Liszt's Three Petrarch Sonnets,his passionate utterance found the special fire in this fusion of medieval and Romantic mindsets (Petrarch's and Liszt's, respectively). But he also, with Zeyen's vivid pianism, created in the final section the rapt, otherworldly sweet stillness both text and music celebrate: "And heaven was enraptured by their harmony." As were we.
Thomas Quasthoff's recital and its incredible impact on Sunday represented his Canadian debut, another important milestone in Stephen Cera's brilliant programming at the George Weston Recital Hall in the Toronto Centre for the Arts (formerly the Ford Centre for the Performing Arts). But these series, no longer with a clear source of funding -- Livent, which launched them, is kaput; Toronto, which took over, is reluctant -- may not survive past this season. Quasthoff himself addressed this with the audience at the beginning of the concert's second half.
He loved singing in this hall, he said, and he could not believe that Toronto would abandon it; he begged that such concerts be saved, and promised to return to sing there again. There's more than one challenge to be picked up here.
Urjo Kareda - The Globe and Mail, 7-3-2000