Thomas Quasthoff

In 2024, Thomas Quasthoff, who was born in Hildesheim in 1959, celebrates his 50th anniversary on stage. After winning the ARD International Music Competition in 1988, he embarked on a global career as a baritone, which led to engagements with the leading orchestras and conductors such as Abbado, Barenboim, Haitink, Jansons, Mehta, Muti, Rattle, and Thielemann. Quasthoff has been artist-in-residence at the Vienna Musikver­ein, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Carnegie Hall in New York, London’s Wigmore Hall, and Lucerne Festival, as well as in Baden-Baden and Hamburg. Although he sang opera roles such as Amfortas in Wagner’s Parsifal and Don Fernando in Beethoven’s Fidelio, his focus was on concert and lieder singing. He retired from his career as a ­classical singer in 2012. He has since performed as a reciter and speaker and focuses on jazz. He is additionally a professor at the Hanns Eisler School of Music in Berlin.

Lucerne Festival debut on August 20, 2005 in seven orchestrated Schubert songs, with Claudio Abbado conducting the Lucerne Festival Orchestra

August 2024