by Alan Boehmer
A miracle occurred last Sunday evening right here in San Luis Obispo. In fact, three of them.
The first miracle was Thomas Quasthoff, who in spite of severe birth defects, rose to become one of the finest bass-baritone singers in the world. Quasthoff’s concert at the Performing Arts Center was sponsored by the San Luis Obispo Symphony, whose music director exhorted the audience in his introductory remarks, saying that Quasthoff "makes us think twice when we have something to complain about."
The second miracle was the music, itself. The program consisted entirely of art songs by Schubert and Brahms. This music grew out of a rich tradition of German folk music. Schubert raised the bar to create a genre of music for which there had been no precedent. His marriage of complex and emotional poety with the nearly orchestral resources of the piano became the foundation for a new category of music, the art song.
Quasthoff’s program began with a highly refined presentation of Schubert’s "Schwanengesang," composed during the last year of his life. This cycle of 14 songs has nothing to do with swans. Rather, its subjects are love, a soldier’s trepidation, longing for Spring, a farewell, the sea, and various other themes.
The Brahms songs which followed showed how much the German art song had developed in a generation. Quasthoff introduced the "Four Serious Songs" as 'among Brahms' most brilliant and glorious works.' Like the "Schwanengesang," they were composed at the end of a brilliant compositional career.
Quasthoff is an affable fellow with an endearing manner, speaking to his audience as through they were friends who just dropped in to visit. The audience was comfortable enough to speak back to him. But when he sang, a sacred hush fell over the audience, which for two hours sat breathlessly savoring every nuance of every meticulously molded phrase. Quasthoff’s rich voice - now lyric, now resonant, now gentle, now powerful, always seamless - was expressive without personal affectation.
A perfect match for Quasthoff's virtuosity was found in pianist Justus Zeyen. Zeyen's graphic accompaniment was everything one could possibly hope for: accurate to a note, perfectly balanced, perfectly integrated, and performed with the kind of control and expressiveness we associate with the finest concert pianists.
The third miracle of this event was the near capacity audience that came to hear this very serious program, bereft of variety and sung entirely in German. With no translation available, few could have entertained the slightest notion of what the music was about. Yet they were enthralled. Could it be that Americans, with no rich folk song tradition and few opportunities to express themselves in song, hunger for a kind of music that touches their emotional lives so directly?