‘I never thought someone like me could be successful’
As he makes his debut as a BBC presenter, baritone Thomas Quasthoff talks to Radhika Sanghani about his unlikely career
Thomas Quasthoff is still on a high from his performance at the Vienna State Opera on Monday night. “It was wonderful,” cries the 57-year-old German baritone the next morning. “It was one of those moments that I will remember when I am on my deathbed. “It’s like my wife said, ‘Tommy, you performed for two hours with your friends on stage and made more than 2,000 people go home completely happy’. What can be nicer than that?”
Quasthoff has been spreading happiness in this fashion for more than 30 years. His career took off at the age of 24, when he won an international music competition for his singing of traditional German lieder music. Since then he has won numerous awards, including two Grammys, and enjoyed an equally successful career as a jazz singer. His 2006 LP The Jazz Album: Watch What Happens, which featured versions of My Funny Valentine and the My Fair Lady song I’ve Grown Accustomed To Her Face among others, outsold all his classical records.
But what makes all of Quasthoff ’s achievements even more extraordinary is the fact that nobody ever expected him to walk, let alone sing. He was one of the many Thalidomide babies born to mothers who took the drug with no idea of its side-effects. The severe disabilities he was born with left him quarantined for the first year of his life, and kept in a plaster cast for almost four years.
Remarkably, he showed his first signs of musical ability during that first year in hospital. “The nurse said to my mother, you have a very musical boy,” he says. “She said, he’s imitating all the songs, the words also, and sang them all in the right key.” But even so, his disability meant that none of his family thought music could ever be more than a hobby for him.
“Nobody thought this would be a professional career,” he says matter-of-factly. “Who would expect someone like me, with my disability, to have a huge international career? Even me, I never expected it for myself – which is what makes it even more beautiful to have it today.” Quasthoff talks openly and humorously about his disability, which has left him with seven fingers, no arms and no upper thighs – in his memoir he often compares himself to The Hunchback of Notre Dame. But his main message is that it is a “fact, not a problem”.
“I’m always saying this because, show me one human who can say they’ve lived for 50 years without any problems,” he booms. “If people are superficial, or lie to people, or care only about money, then to me they’re also disabled. It’s how you define disabled. I have seven fingers, no knees, and am relatively short. So I’m disabled. But am I disabled on the inside? No. I’m a relatively happy, normal, confident, funny person enjoying life and – I don’t think it’s arrogant to say – singing on a world-class level.” Quasthoff refuses to let his disability affect his adult life. He is happily married, with a stepdaughter, and though he retired from classical singing in 2012, still performs jazz at around 30 concerts a year (“It’s nothing compared to before, when I would do 90”).
His parents must take much of the credit for his success. It was thanks to their determination that Quasthoff defied doctors’ gloomy predictions and learnt to walk – his mother rewarding all his efforts with chocolate; his father inventing a railed device to help him move.
“Without the support of my parents, I wouldn’t be here and I wouldn’t be a professional musician,” he says firmly. “We were always very close. If you raise a child, and you’re always suffering, not knowing if he is able to live alone, to go through life successfully, all your heart and spirit is connected to your child.” His parents tried to send him to mainstream schools, but when none would accept him, he was forced to go to a boarding school for children with disabilities. There, children were punished sadistically, deprived of sleep, bullied by staff, and forced to go hours without meals. “It’s not a nice part in my life,” he says briskly.
Life improved when he was 13 and began singing lessons with the teacher he’d stay with for 17 years. His talent guided him through the difficulties he went on to face, from playground cruelty to the harsh blow of rejection he received from the Hanover conservatoire, which refused him entry on the basis that, thanks to his disability, he was unable to play an
Quasthoff was one of the many Thalidomide babies. ‘That is a fact, not a problem,’ he says
instrument. “The university said I couldn’t study singing without even having heard me,” he says, with a hint of frustration still in his voice. “But, it’s all in the past. I have my professorship now, and I’ve been teaching for 21 years.”
Quasthoff is reluctant to dwell on negatives. Instead he is enjoying the freedom that comes with his fame, which allows him at once to sing jazz, teach his students, and make sure future generations understand the beauty of the lied form.
Tonight a documentary he has made on the subject – Becoming a Lied Singer: Thomas Quasthoff and the Art of German Song – airs on BBC Four. In it, he explores his love of the music, which was made famous by Franz Schubert in the 19th century, and then by Quasthoff, whose inability to use his body to express himself prevented him from singing other classical music, such as opera. “It’s such a wonderful, intimate music form,” he exalts. Not that he sings lieder any longer. “Classical music was a long episode in my life, where I enjoyed every second, but now I’m on the next episode. I’m a [ jazz] singer, I’m a teacher, I’m a friend, a husband, a father. That’s a lot of jobs. It’s what makes life exciting for me.”
He married his wife Claudia Schtelsick back in 2006 after they met on a TV show she was producing. “I fell immediately in love but thought the last thing she was waiting for was a 1.35 metre disabled person,” he laughs, before recounting how she then invited him to her birthday party and they ended up kissing on the floor.
Thirteen years later, they are still very much in love, and Quasthoff is a devoted husband as well as a besotted stepfather to his 18-year-old Lotta. Are they more important to him than his career? “Oh yes,” he says instantly. “The music profession ends at some point. But my relationship with my wife, hopefully, I will have till I die. Music is passion and I love it, but it’s not comparable to being in love with a person.”
Indeed, he is happiest with friends and family and would rather be at home than on the red carpet. “It’s more important for me than that society blah blah s---,” he says dismissively. “I live my life, and I don’t care what other people think about me – that I’m arrogant or difficult – I don’t give a damn. If they want to be jealous, let them. You have to work very hard as an artist for people to ever be jealous of you. I’ve been living my dream for 40 years, and I’m grateful for every second of it.”
Becoming A Lied Singer: Thomas Quasthoff and the Art of German Song is on BBC Four tonight at 8pm