“We should all stand up,” said Thomas Quasthoff. So we did. “And click our fingers on the two and the four of the bar.” That too. Brahms’s “Wiegenlied” Op. 49/4 had been ‘jazzed’ for us into 4/4, and became the second encore of Quasthoff’s Wigmore Hall concert. It felt quite a symbolic moment, as if we should be celebrating the fact of jazz being performed in one of the world’s great temples of classical music with its wonderful acoustic, a place where Quasthoff himself used to perform Lieder recitals, and as the song-text has it, we are all ‘watched over by little angels’ (von Englein bewacht).
Quasthoff had programmed this song, “Guten Abend, Gut’ Nacht…” as a thank you to Wigmore director John Gilhooly, who used to book Quasthoff to sing Lieder in the days before he retired from classical singing. The singer made references to the freedom he now feels as he performs a jazz programme, especially when he thinks back to the rigours of performing in the classical sphere, and times when his concerts were always planned several years ahead.
I also found myself reflecting on how we in the UK don’t really do that ‘defence-of-jazz-as-a-music-of-freedom’ thing. Perhaps it helps that the Head of State in Germany is a jazz fan. Bundespräsident Frank-Walter Steinmeier makes a couple of speeches about the cultural importance and the political message of jazz every year.* Thomas Quasthoff, just three years younger than Steinmeier, has the same reverence for the music, and has had for decades. Even though Quasthoff built a career in classical music, jazz left a huge mark on that generation, and notably on the singer’s elder brother Michael (1957-2010).
Thinking of formative experiences from long ago, it was hard not to make another connection to childhood when Quasthoff sang “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child / A long way from home”. It was deep, resonant, and totally affecting. The singer has always insisted that the one response to his performances that he recoils from is sympathy for his disability. But when one knows the deeply disturbing story from his 2004 autobiography, repeated on his 2009 Desert Island Discs, that he was mandatorily placed in a boarding school where he had to share a dormitory with children with mental issues, it’s almost impossible not to be affected by thoughts of things that happened almost sixty years ago when he sings these words.
Overall the majority of the programme is upbeat, the mood celebratory, with a lot of good humour. The biggest applause from the Wigmore audience came in response to a wordless solo vocal extemporisation from the singer with all kinds of Bobby McFerrin-ish effects, plus a bit of Clark Terry-ish mumbles and even an impromptu “Gesundheit” in response to a bronchially challenged audience member. Quite the tour de force.
Quasthoff is a phenomenon, and the message he gives is that performing jazz in the company of musicians he clearly respects and likes is something that he doesn’t merely choose to do, but a sphere in which he is free to follow his instincts. We had two Jobim classics, “Ipanema” and “Corcovado/Quiet Nights”, which brought to the fore the superbly gentle guitar playing of Wolfgang Meyer. He was also featured on trombone for the prologue to the concert alongside trombonist Shawn Grocott, another subtle and supportive player.
I was completely taken with the piano playing of Simon Oslender, a regular in Wolfgang Haffner’s bands. Just like other pianists who work wonderfully with singers – Eric Legnini comes to mind – there is incredible craft, but he will quite deliberately never outshine the vocalist, and he gift-wraps the end of choruses so that the singer can smoothly take over. His solo work on “Moon River” was unbelievable, and it was the one moment I wished we could have heard him without the decoration of Quasthoff’s vocal percussion. Intrinsically it is a good thing, but there are moments when one can have too much of it.
One other blind-spot of mine: I remember Quasthoff doing John Lennon’s “Imagine” on an album with the NDR Big Band, at the Trauermarsch tempo of [crotchet equals 60]. Quasthoff had the dial stuck there again on Friday and I still find it gewöhnungsbedürftig (takes some getting used to).
Those are minor quibbles. Quasthoff and his band know how to put on a good show. On a night when one of the showpiece games of Euro 2024 turned into a goalless draw, it is good to go to an event where jazz was the winner.
(*) His most recent one was a fine speech to celebrate women in jazz.
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