HOWZAT

The baritone remembers hearing snide remarks after winning his first competition. “One guy said this, so I looked at him and said: ‘Life would be maybe much easier for you if you would be better and win. But you didn’t.’ Because of my disability?!” Quasthoff snorts, and blows away the notion with a ripe raspberry.

Regardless of Quasthoff’s dazzling vocal gifts, it is nigh on impossible to discount his personal history — which says more about our attitudes to disability than it says about Quasthoff’s. He detests any notion of heroics. “People say: ‘Oh, your life was full of struggle.’ No, it wasn’t! I can totally understand if a normal grown person is sitting in front of a person with seven fingers, short arms and short legs, it’s natural to say ‘Your life must be so aah’,” and he emits an exhausted moan. “And I could support this very much if I was sitting here like that [he slumps pitifully].. I’m not.

“I reached everything that I couldn’t even imagine, 25 or 30 years ago.” The cheeky Quasthoff smile returns: “And sorry if this sounds very arrogant, but I think I deserve it.”

Bach is the Easter favourite
Holly Swayne

March 28
Mozart and Mendelssohn

The London Concert Choir and the Royal Philharmonic perform Mozart’s Coronation Mass and Mendelssohn’s Second Symphony.
Barbican (020-7638 8891)

April 2
St Matthew Passion

Free performance by St Paul’s Cathedral Choir and Chorus with the London Mozart Players.
St Paul’s Cathedral (020-7246 8350)

April 4
Bach Mass in B Minor

Exultate Singers and Emerald Ensemble.
St George’s, Bristol (0117-929 4929)

Birmingham Bach Choir and the Orchestra of the Swan perform James MacMillan’s Easter Cantata and Purcell.
The Oratory, Birmingham (0121-454 0496)

April 5
Handel’s Messiah

Performed by King’s College choir. The concert will be broadcast live in selected cinemas.
King’s College, Cambridge (01223 357851)
www.artsalliancemedia.com/opera/MessiahCinemas.html

Fauré’s Requiem at Canterbury

Local choirs perform this work and Stainer’s Crucifixion. In aid of the Save Canterbury Cathedral Fund.
Canterbury Cathedral, (01227 464764)

April 7
St Matthew Passion

Manchester Camerata and the choir of Clare College Cambridge perform Bach.
The Bridgewater Hall, Manchester (0161-907 9000)

Good Friday
St Matthew Passion

Ex Cathedra Choir and Baroque Orchestra of period instruments.
Symphony Hall, Birmingham. 2pm. (0121-780 3333, www.thsh.co.uk)

— Thomas Quasthoff sings in Bach’s St Matthew Passion at the Barbican, EC2 (www.barbican.org.uk) on April 5

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