Thomas Quasthoff

Thomas Quasthoff was born in Hildesheim, Germany in 1959 and began his vocal studies with Professor Charlotte Lehmann and Professor Ernst Huber-Contwig in Hannover in 1972. His music awards include, alongside many others, first prize in the ARD International Music Competition Munich, the Shostakovich in Moscow, and the Hamada Trust/Scotsman Festival Prize. It was his debut in 1995 at the Oregon Bach Festival, however, that laid the basis for his highly successful career in the USA, and he has worked with the world’s most renowned orchestras and conductors at all the prestigious houses and festivals. A frequent guest of the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics, he could regularly be enjoyed at all major music venues, working closely with conductors such as Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim, Christoph Eschenbach, James Levine, Bernard Haitink, Mariss Jansons, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, Seiji Ozawa, Simon Rattle, Helmuth Rilling, Christian Thielemann, and Franz Welser-Möst. His Carnegie Hall debut in 1999 performing Schubert’s Winterreise also led to regular appearances. His opera debut came in 2003 as the Minister in Fidelio with the Berliner Philharmoniker and Simon Rattle, followed by his Vienna Staatsoper debut in 2004 as Amforta in Wagner’s Parsifal. Quasthoff has been artist-in-residence at Vienna’s Musikverein, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Carnegie Hall, and the Lucerne Festival, as well as in Baden-Baden, Hamburg, London Wigmore Hall, and the Barbican Centre. He also held a professorship at the Music Academy in Detmold from 1996–2004 and from 2004 until today, he holds a professorship at Berlin’s Hanns Eisler Hochschule für Musik. As an exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist since 1999, his recordings have earned a long list of international awards and prizes including three Grammys, six Echo Awards, BBC Music Magazine Award, Amadeus Music Award, and the Orphée d’or. He received Hildesheim’s Ring of Honour, the Order of Merit of the Republic of Germany, the European Culture Prize for Music at the Dresden Frauenkirche, and the Herbert von Karajan Music Prize as an exceptional artist. He ended his career as a singer in 2012 but retains his close ties to singing and music as a teacher. His devotion to the upcoming generation of singers inspired him to launch the “Das Lied” international song competition and master classes bring him to the festival Heidelberger Frühling, to the Verbier Festival, to the Summer Campus in Rostock, as well as to the Aldeburgh Festival. In addition to his teaching commitments, he has also discovered several new talents, appearing as a narrator, comedian, moderator and even actor. Back at the Verbier Festival in 2015, he even made his conducting debut with Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion.