This an English translation of the German text (by me!) of an interview
with Thomas Quasthoff, published in the May edition of Fono Forum, the
leading German magazine for classical music.

   Q:  Mr Quasthoff, your fame rests more or less on your being a
   Liedsaenger.  Well, these days you here ever and again that Liedsaenger
   are having a tough time today because every year less and less people
   are coming to the Liederabende...

   A:  I don't think that's true.  I never sing in front of empty rows
   so often.  Many some problems stem from the subscription system.  I
   think it is important how you make music.  I try to be very honest
   and very true, to create the music anew together with the pianist on
   every evening.  It will never be like in the rehearsal.  And I think
   the people notice that.

   Q:  Your colleague Juliane Banse once said:  "Thomas Quasthoff shifts
   the focus to the music." Maybe a banal statement to make but maybe,
   if you think it over, very profound and true.

   A:  I have just read the last reviews about Jessye Norman in the
   Financial Times - then you know exactly what Juliane Banse means.
   The important thing is not the music, you know, but the cult star
   Jessye Norman who is so generous to make music for us (and, if you
   believe the critics, she does it relatively miserable).  Well, of
   course this is polemic and very subjective but I really think that
   with such artists their cult prestige is more important to them than
   the music.  And I regret this.  In the end it's always the music
   which is the most important thing and not we.  We are just interpreters
   and we have the great honour and pleasure to be allowed to sing
   fantastic music.

   Q:  Your new CD contains Schubert's "Schwanengesang" and Brahms'
   "Vier ernste Gesaenge".  Why this compilation?

   A:  I love both cycles very much (with the "Schwanengesang not being
   a real cycle).  I have been accompanied by the "Vier ernste Gesaenge"
   my whole career through and I think that the lyrics are extremely
   important for our times.  The music is (and you can hear it easily
   despite my singing) simply incredible.  Well, I really think that
   the "Vier ernste Gesaenge" belong to the greatest stuff ever composed
   in the Lied genre.

   Q:  Do you feel inclined especially to late and ripe works?

   A:  Not more or less than to early works like, for example, "Musensohn"
   or "Forelle".  I like to sing them because I can use my personality
   well for these songs.  That's why I am very glad that the Deutsche
   Grammophon said yes to my plan and made this recording with me.

   Q:  When you began your career it wasn't always so easy for you to
   get what you wanted.  It is known that you couldn't study because
   your can't play the piano, due to your handicap.  Surely you look
   at these drawbacks somewhat relaxed nowadays.

   A:  Yes, it is twenty years by now.  This was a decision that was
   correct when you look at like a lawyer but from the moral viewpoint
   it is still regrettable.  But in the end the private lessons with
   Charlotte Lehmann and her husband Ernst Huber-Contwig have been
   the right way.  It is ironic that I am now a professor at the
   Musikhochschule Detmold without ever having been a student.  And
   I am very proud and happy to be able to teach in Detmold.

   Q:  Have you been influenced by being forced to overcome such
   impediments?

   A:  I don't like that reducing my biography to impediments.  Every
   kind of experience is important in life, be it the first love or the
   first parting, the first Indian dish or the first Thai meal - all
   experiences which form a personality in the course of a lifetime.
   It's interesting that all people, regarding me, talk about impediments.
   I experienced so many most happy things in my life, far far away from
   having been impediments.  I still remember being intimate with my
   first girl friend for the first time, that was an experience I will
   never forget.  And that shaped me a lot, you know.  I mean, especially
   in romantic music where you have to sing a lot about love:  who never
   experienced love will always have problems to be artistically truthful
   about love.  That's totally clear.  I have never lived the life of
   a handicapped person.  Well, I don't ride a bike or these ... shoes
   with wheels, you know...

   Q:  Inline-Skates?

   A:  Yes, exactly.  Strange new word.  I just want to say that all
   experiences shape my music, not only the handicapped-person-stuff.

   Q:  Okay, back to music.  In the last years the American audience
   and critics praised you a lot.  Is there a difference to the reactions
   towards you in Germany and Europe?

   A:  Yes.  In Germany people are very envious at the beginning.  The
   journalists are the worst.  As an artist you get used to having a
   harder job in your own country.  But this is very very deutsch.  The
   Americans have an incredible respect towards artistic achievements
   and work, want to be amazed.  If you can do this you have the best
   audience in the world.  Except from Russia.

   Q:  Why Russia?

   A:  In Russia understanding of music is mixed with Russian melancholy.
   Und together with romantische music this is an almost ideal symbiosis.
   For a lot of people I met there a concert is like a service.  They
   have such a low standard of living that music is sheer luxury for
   them.  You can notice this in the concerts:  no coughing, no brousing
   through booklets.  This is nothing I'd like to experience here again,
   too.  Not that the standard of living should be lower but that the
   people learn anew how to listen to music.

   Q:  We can hear you on CD and in concerts singing opera arias.  Will
   there be opera productions with Thomas Quasthoff?

   A:  2003 I will sing in my first opera, in Salzburg.  The Minister
   in "Fidelio", one year later the Amfortas in "Parsifal" at the Wiener
   Staatsoper.

   Q:  Has there been resentments against you being on an opera stage?
   Were directors against you?

   A:  No, it was all my decision.  I didn't want to.  People want me
   to do operas for a long time now but I first wanted to become an
   established oratoria and concert singer before making it to the opera.
   Well, I think now is the time and Simon Rattle was the one who said:
   "You have to do it.  And I want you to do it because I want to do it
   together with you." And because Simon is not only in things regarding
   music a person I trust infinitely I said yes.  I agreed to the role
   of Amfortas because it is a very kantable role, not loud, not so much
   Wagner like they normally sing it.  I'm really looking forward to it.

   Q:  You probably will, as a Liedersaenger, give opera something
   unusual.

   A:  Yes.  A reducement of loudness for example.  At least I hope
   this.  Otherwise I wouldn't do it.

   Q:  Last your you took part in a very memorable and much-disputed
   concert:  a production of Beethoven's Ninth with the Wiener
   Philharmoniker in the former Konzentrationslager Mauthausen.  What
   kind of experience was this for you?

   A:  It way very moving.  I think I don't have to tell anyone what I
   felt being there.  I had to think all the time:  God, you would have
   been in here, too...  I found it very important that the orchestra
   did this, especially now under the new political situation in Austria.
   I really couldn't understand the argument about the concert, really,
   I couldn't.  But then it was very human.  There is this fine Berliner
   saying:  "Irjendwer hat immer wat zu scheissen.  - There's always
   someone who has to use you as his loo." You really do not go to
   Mauthausen and play the Ninth because you want to joke around or get
   even more popular but the whole event had a meaning.  And that
   journalist try to say there is no meaning is really unbearable.

[A fascinating but, I admit, also strange thought to experience the highly
handicapped Quasthoff on the opera stage.  How will they handle it?]

   Q:  How important is it for you to be liked?

   A:  It's my food!  To applaude means to reduce the tension, for both
   the audience and for me, naturally, too, after being highly concentrated
   and filled with adrenaline for one and a half hour.  I don't think
   I fancy applause in a church, after a Matthaeus-Passion for instance
   or the Brahms Requiem but when you do these works in a concert, I
   don't mind the modern way of applauding them.  Because the artists
   work for the audience.  That some people always show themselves as
   so terribly pious, because Jesus was crucified - goodness, it's a
   long time since then, isn't it, and do you know if it really happened?
   There are a lot of pherisees out there.  Yes, I like applause a lot.

   Q:  There are people who always lament that there are no good young
   singers in Germany who could become really great singer personalites.

   A:  I don't believe this.  First of all there are much too many bad
   singing teachers, secondly the young singers do not study long enough.
   Five years are not long enough!  The reason:  the studies are organized
   by people who don't know anything about the matter.  There's a third
   point:  young singers are not given the chance to develop anymore.
   A lot of them want success the fast way - that's clear and you can
   say it clearly.  But there are gifted young singers:  Take Sebastian
   Noack - or Matthias Goerne.  And Olaf Baer and Andreas Schmidt are
   not that terribly old, too.  I just think that the universities didn't
   concentrate enough on the level of quality.  There are a lot of
   lifetime professors who have nothing to show for themselves.  And
   then there are a lot of your colleagues to blame when they write
   about gifted young singers who have just made one or two CDs as voices
   of the century.  That's very, very terrible.  Take me:  I won the
   ARD-competition in 1988 and now, twelve years ago, I am more successful
   than ever.  That's great.  To be there over such a long time, that's
   the acid test, not to have two or three good concerts.  Give the
   young people more time to develop!  There is a magic word in our
   profession and it's "No".

   Q:  After being awarded with the Grammy you are known to a wider
   public.  Is success a temptation for you?

   A:  It was very nice to be invited to TV shows, being invited as a
   musician, not as a handicapped person.  When such prices have such
   effects they are ok.  That the artist Thomas Quasthoff is accepted
   more and not the handicapped person is, I have to say, a pleasure to
   me.

   Q:  When we began the interview you said you want to make music in
   an honest way.  Is it sometimes difficult to keep things going that
   way?

   A:  I can't do my music any other way.  My rehearsals will always be
   different from my concerts.  After the concerts I say to my pianists:
   Sorry.  I need this freedom in a concert to just do the things that
   spontaneously come to my mind.  Thank God I have the luck to work
   with pianists who are very gifted in anticipating, who ask what I
   will do next.  That's the exciting part for me and maybe also the
   reason why the Liederabende are so successful because the audience
   is very basically gripped.  And it is part of this to just make a
   joke in between if is okay to do so.  I simply want to entertain,
   too.

[End of the interview with Thomas "The Basher" Quasthoff.]

Robert Peters
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