This 2-disc set, the latest in Deutsche Grammophon’s “Portrait of the Artist” series, features selections from bass-baritone Thomas Quasthoff’s recital recordings from 1998 to the present. Many of these have been reviewed here, and for a summary of Quasthoff’s superb artistry and individual treatments of this repertoire by Schubert, Schumann, Liszt, Strauss, Bach, and others, I refer you to our review archive (three examples can be found by typing Q6343, Q3749, and Q1217 in the search box). There’s no question regarding this singer’s extraordinary gifts, either in a technical sense or as an interpreter of songs–as I noted previously, he has a capacity, nearly unique among today’s lieder singers, “to understand the communicative and emotive heart of a song and how to do the things that personalize it without subtracting from the music or text.” He shows why sheer vocal beauty isn’t enough in lieder singing–although he certainly offers no small amount of absolutely gorgeous sound!
This collection is well chosen to celebrate not only Quasthoff’s full interpretive range, but also his impressive vocal range: his lowest-register notes (around a low E-flat) resonate with a power both thrilling and unexpected for a voice that also commands such upper-register lyricism and lightness.
Disc 1 includes several Schubert songs orchestrated by Reger and Offenbach (An die Musik, Erlkönig, Ständchen, and Greisengesang) and many others with orchestra by Weber, Wagner, and Strauss. We also get Quasthoff’s sublime performance of Bach’s BWV 82 (Ich habe genug) with the Berlin Baroque Soloists. Disc 2 contains songs with piano (played by the brilliant Justus Zeyen), beginning with Schubert’s Auf der Bruck, a performance that, along with subsequent songs by Liszt (Die Loreley) and Loewe (Herr Oluf), epitomizes Quasthoff’s versatility and dramatic artistry.
There’s a surprise at the end: a previously unreleased encore from a Berlin concert in September, 2004. Here is Quasthoff, in a sensational six-minute-long “solo jazz improvisation” that answers the question, “what does such a gifted singer do in his spare time?” Even if you already own the other songs on their previous recordings, you just might owe it to yourself to hear this little gem. However, if you care about texts and translations, you’ll need those earlier CDs because here the liner booklet is used only for an interview with the singer (fairly interesting) and full-page color pictures and promos for Quasthoff’s discography. [7/28/2006]
