Thomas Quasthoff

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand nine.

Presenter0:28

My Castaway this week is the singer Thomas Kostoff.

Presenter0:31

He has won three Grammy Awards, and has performed in concert halls the world over, under the batons of the finest conductors. Sir Simon Rattle describes him as one of the most natural, expressive human beings I have ever met.

Presenter0:45

He made his name as a classical performer, but he also sings jazz, gospel, and spiritual songs, and counts Tony and Cherie Blair among his singing buddies, more of which in a moment. According to the Los Angeles Times, he is one of the great singers of our time, and certainly one of the most remarkable of any time.

Presenter1:04

That his life has been remarkable is a reference to not just his renowned talent, but also to the fact that he was born one of the many thalidomide babies. For a good while it seemed that might stop him from pursuing music as a career.

Presenter1:16

We'll come on to that later on, Thomas Kostoff. But first of all, let's go back to the Tony and Cherie connection. Where on earth did you sing with them? How did it come about?

Thomas Quasthoff1:25

Uh it was the uh G eight meeting at Cologne. Yes.

Presenter1:29

Yes.

Thomas Quasthoff1:29

And I'm a very close friend of Gerhard Schroeder, who was Chancellor for many years, and at that time he was Chancellor. And he invited me to sing for a gala concert for all these people. Chirac was there, and Tony Blair was there, and Bill Clinton was there.

Speaker 11:35

Yeah.

Presenter1:47

Together with the other one.

Thomas Quasthoff1:49

Together with other artists, yes, I was part of a gala concert.

Presenter1:52

But the little private well, it wasn't really a performance, there was a kind of sing-along in the bar afterwards, am I right?

Thomas Quasthoff1:58

Yeah, there was a dinner after that and then Gerd Schröder turned to me and said, Well, we are here in Germany, show them how it goes. So I started to sing and lately we were all singing together

Thomas Quasthoff2:09

Blair's wife was sitting on his knees, and so it was extremely familiar, very, very nice and very moving.

Presenter2:15

Who had a good voice? Can you mark can you mark them out of those leaders? Who was the best singer?

Thomas Quasthoff2:19

But it wasn't Schroeder I had.

Thomas Quasthoff2:22

I have to say, I think Clinton is not so bad. He's a very musical guy. I mean, he's a saxophone player. Saxophone playing is very good.

Presenter2:26

Yeah, he plays as a saxophone player.

Speaker 12:28

Yeah. It's

Thomas Quasthoff2:31

The most elegant and charming man was honestly Jacques Chirac. He was a very, very, very friendly and nice guy.

Presenter2:39

A little bit about your singing. We're going to talk a lot more about it later. But but you were not given the automatic privileges that you would have been if you'd been an able bodied person, because you you weren't able to play the piano and therefore you didn't get into the music school that you easily could have. What happened instead?

Thomas Quasthoff2:55

Of course there were times when when the university were saying to me you are not allowed to study music because you have to play an instrument, but it was law at that time. So I did it all privately and I paid every lesson by myself. I had no financial support by state government or anything. And I am now which is the irony of the whole story that I am now a fixed professor even without studying at the university ever.

Presenter3:25

So much more to talk about. Tell me, Thomas, then, about the first piece of music that you've chosen to day.

Thomas Quasthoff3:31

Yeah, I have a two year older brother and of course I was starting when I was young with classical music influenced by my father and then my brother had all this musical development going from Deep Purple over Jethro Tal I have not to say that because he's he's very angry about that period to Emerson Lake and Palmer and all these things. And finally we both landed in jazz. And Chikoria was of course one of the main protagonists I admired always very, very much. And I love this recording so much because the melodies are very beautiful. It's pure, wonderful.

Thomas Quasthoff4:11

Wonderful music to listen to.

Presenter5:07

Chick Correa and Gary Burton, and I'm your pal. And just a moment ago there, you said, Thomas Krostoff, I love this music. It's very interesting that you don't contain yourself, as I said in the introduction, to just leader, to just one type of music. You range across the whole lot.

Thomas Quasthoff5:21

Ticky

Thomas Quasthoff5:22

No, but this is the wonderful uh side effect if you're in the musical world. I mean, this is what makes this job so exciting, is to spread out with your brain

Thomas Quasthoff5:34

I mean, I'm listening to James Brown, I'm listening to Autist Redding, I'm listening to Sarah Vaughan, and you know, the world is.

Thomas Quasthoff5:42

full of big talons.

Presenter5:44

Let me take you back to nineteen eighty eight then. It was uh Munich and it was the point that you won a very significant singing competition. What do you remember of the event?

Thomas Quasthoff5:55

Yeah, it was a very funny year. I mean, it was not my first competition, it was my fourth.

Thomas Quasthoff6:00

And I never came out of a competition without any award. So to be honest, I think my inner expectation was maybe higher than I said to other people outside. But um

Thomas Quasthoff6:14

The whole experience was very wonderful. For the last two rounds my par I invited my parents to come to Munich, which was of course very moving because my father was a singer too.

Thomas Quasthoff6:26

And um

Presenter6:27

Could you see them watching you from the audience?

Thomas Quasthoff6:29

No.

Thomas Quasthoff6:30

But they were there when the the the price list was announced, and I know my father is a pipe smoker.

Thomas Quasthoff6:37

And when they announced that I won the first prize, he I never saw that before, his pipe falled down on the floor. He was shocked.

Presenter6:46

Did you did you know, were you aware that at that moment your world changed, that this was a very good idea.

Thomas Quasthoff6:51

No, not at that time. No, no, not on that that day. But my father called me, I think, three days later and said, You know, I'm cutting off the telephone because he had, I think, on one day, eighty telephone calls to take. I had no management at that time, of course.

Thomas Quasthoff7:09

It was a very exciting time.

Presenter7:11

Let's take a little break for our second piece of music then. What's your second track today?

Thomas Quasthoff7:15

Yeah, it's one of my favorite pieces out of The Winterize. It is Dietrich Fischer Diskau singing Das Wiltshaus the Tavern uh from Schubert's song cycle, The Winteriser, accompanied by Gerald Moore.

Speaker 37:28

How fine and totter art me

Speaker 37:46

Holy beautiful.

Speaker 37:50

Join

Speaker 37:56

Babish by me.

Presenter8:14

Dietrich Fischer Dieskau singing Das Wierstalt, The Tavern, from Schubert's song cycle Winterreis. His accompanist was Gerald Moore. I am conscious that you you once said, Thomas, I abhor it when my personal history is portrayed as the battle of a brave hero against evil forces. You're referring there, of course, to the fact that not an article can be written without people saying, Let us talk about your disability, let us talk about your early life, but inevitably it is very much part of who you are and very much part of your experience.

Thomas Quasthoff8:47

Yeah, but you know, my disability is honestly after fifty years now not really a problem, it's a fact. Yes. And thank God the side effects of the thaladomide disability is in my case only that I have short arms and short legs and uh

Presenter8:54

Yeah.

Thomas Quasthoff9:08

The life as an artist is unusual in any way. I mean, you're traveling a lot and uh

Thomas Quasthoff9:14

You're meeting

Thomas Quasthoff9:15

Really interesting, astonishing, wonderful people and

Thomas Quasthoff9:21

The rest of my life is is well quite normal. I have a very beautiful, wonderful wife and uh we are raising a wonderful little child and uh yeah, so that's a very normal earth-grounded life. Of course it's clear that we are talking about my disability, but uh I would not put a kind of fate on my shoulder which which doesn't exist

Presenter9:48

Talk to me about the attitudes when you were a tiny child. I mean, how were you first looked after?

Thomas Quasthoff9:53

Well the p the thing was that the real small childhood didn't didn't exist because my foot were standing backwards when I was born, so I was laying in a permanent cast for one and a half year when I was nine month old.

Thomas Quasthoff10:08

And I remember that my mother was telling me

Thomas Quasthoff10:12

Once that a nurse came to her, saying, Oh, you have a very musical little son.

Thomas Quasthoff10:18

And my mother looked at her and said,'What are you talking about? He's not even able to talk.

Thomas Quasthoff10:22

Yes, but he's singing all the melodies, imitating the words, on the right pitch.

Thomas Quasthoff10:28

And so that started very early. And it was very interesting because we had.

Presenter10:31

Tommy, you say very early. How how old would you have been then?

Thomas Quasthoff10:34

They're not even a year old.

Thomas Quasthoff10:36

As I said, it started really very early in the music making.

Presenter10:39

Where are your parents' musical?

Thomas Quasthoff10:41

Yeah, my mother played a little bit piano and um my father was a singer. He really studied singing.

Thomas Quasthoff10:48

But I think he didn't have really the what shall I say the mentality the first bad review would kill him.

Thomas Quasthoff10:56

So, as I always say, you need not only a beautiful voice for this profession, you need also a big.

Thomas Quasthoff11:01

Thick skin.

Thomas Quasthoff11:03

To handle all this but Yeah, music was always a part of my childhood.

Presenter11:08

Why have you chosen your third track and and what is it then?

Thomas Quasthoff11:12

Well, I'm a big admirer of uh Maurizio Pollini, he's really one of my favorite classical pianists.

Thomas Quasthoff11:20

The second reason is I know him personally very well.

Thomas Quasthoff11:23

and I I like him very, very much and third point, I love Chopin. And this Polonaise in C sharp is a kind of really forcing and and dramatic piece of music and uh I love it very much.

Presenter12:38

Maurizio Polini, playing part of Chopin's Polonaise in C sharp minor. So, Thomas Krostoff, you were at boarding school for a while when you were a little boy. How young would you have been, and how long did it last?

Thomas Quasthoff12:49

Well, the problem was at that time nobody really knew how to handle these kind of disabilities.

Thomas Quasthoff12:56

So of course my parents tried to put me on a normal, regular school.

Thomas Quasthoff13:03

But every school said, no, no, no, no, no, no, not possible. We cannot do this to the little boy, we cannot do this to the teachers.

Thomas Quasthoff13:11

So I went to this boarding school then and um I was five years old. The problem was that they didn't separate mental, physical, uh psyche uh disabilities from each other. So I slept the first, I think, two years, I was in a bedroom, which was really very, very difficult because there were even a lot of children who were screaming in the night and uh

Thomas Quasthoff13:42

It wasn't very easy. I mean.

Thomas Quasthoff13:44

so called to have an easy childhood.

Thomas Quasthoff13:48

Yeah.

Presenter13:48

And this was

Thomas Quasthoff13:48

But my parents didn't had any other choices, but at the beginning it was really difficult.

Presenter13:53

You don't seem to me at all to be a sentimental person, to be somebody who looks back at all and feels sorry for themselves. I am, however, one Uh

Thomas Quasthoff14:01

I think my wife has a different opinion about that.

Thomas Quasthoff14:06

Oh yes, I can.

Thomas Quasthoff14:08

I can. I mean, before I met my wife and before I was raising a little child, life makes you in some ways hard. And honestly, my wife changed that in a very

Thomas Quasthoff14:22

Smooth but successful way, and I'm much closer now to tears than I was ever before in my life.

Presenter14:30

How how did she do that? How did she open you up?

Thomas Quasthoff14:32

Um

Thomas Quasthoff14:33

You know, it was very easy. First of all, she really encouraged me to let go. I had this kind of fear uh at the beginning, especially of our relationship. Um my wife has no physical disability, so I didn't trust my personality enough that every time when she went out I said, Okay, now she's meeting another man and gone.

Thomas Quasthoff14:59

And every time she looked at me and said, Tommy, I didn't marry you because I want to leave you immediately. I love you.

Thomas Quasthoff15:07

So is putting a quality into a relationship which is really very, very beautiful.

Presenter15:13

And what about your your wife brought with her to your marriage her daughter, who you bring up together? What about

Thomas Quasthoff15:18

Yeah.

Presenter15:19

Being a father does it has that that must inevitably have changed you too, as well as being a husband.

Thomas Quasthoff15:24

Well, at the beginning it was really difficult because of course, I mean, um Claudia and Lotta had a very close relationship because they were living for many years alone. You have to grow also in the position as a father. It doesn't happen from the moment on.

Thomas Quasthoff15:39

But thank God Lotte is really a kind of very, very, very easygoing child and now she is for me like a daughter. And thank God we have a very, very good relationship to her real father. We try to make it for Lotte as easy as possible. I mean, it's her childhood and we have to take care that she's a happy little girl and not having any kind of problems.

Presenter16:01

Let's take a break for some music. Tell me about your uh next piece of music and why you've chosen it.

Thomas Quasthoff16:06

Well, Stevie wondered what an amazing artist he is. A beautiful voice, great composer. I love soul music very much. And um I mean such a long career. He started even in his he was not even twenty and started a big career as a harp player and a singer. And if you look he's still in the business, he's now going on his sixties I think and he is simply the greatest for me.

Speaker 316:29

Uh

Speaker 116:29

They can feel it all

Speaker 116:34

Sick and feeling out of fever

Speaker 116:38

They can feel it more

Speaker 316:43

Megan Fair

Speaker 117:05

Cause it knows it is and always will Be one of the things that life just won't quit

Speaker 117:14

Here's some music spy and time will not allow us to forget

Presenter17:23

Stevie Wonder and Sir Duke with Thomas Kostoff singing along. Unfortunately, you couldn't hear that, but I had the privilege of it here in the studio. Would you like to work with him?

Thomas Quasthoff17:31

Well, yeah, it's an an unfulfilled dream. I mean, he is he is really one of my absolutely biggest heroes. And from the first moment on, this music gave me so much. And I mean, what I loved specially on Stevie Wonder, and maybe you will laugh now, even on the on the career and history of of Mohammed Ali, of Cassius Clay, was that there were

Thomas Quasthoff17:53

absolutely outstanding in their profession that they did

Thomas Quasthoff17:57

And besides all, there were very political people taking a song even from the album is called Living in the City, where he is really arguing against the slums and how they handle especially Afro-American people. And Mohamed Ali, who was clearly against the Vietnam War war. And I'm admiring this very, very much because I miss at the moment also in Germany, I don't know how it is here, but I miss in Germany really people who are going on the streets saying you cannot do that, it's not right.

Presenter18:30

It's interesting also that that you have chosen a as an artist to, in a sense, also express yourself in an area of music, in in jazz as well as classical music, when jazz has that great tradition of

Presenter18:43

of essentially being a political form of music because it was a sense in which it was one of the very few ways that that black people could express themselves. Is that one of the reasons you're you're drawn to it? Because it has that political thread running through it?

Thomas Quasthoff18:51

Yeah.

Thomas Quasthoff18:55

That was one side. I think the other side was really this total freedom in improvising over a melody that you have.

Thomas Quasthoff19:03

which is not possible in the classical music. I mean every Winterreiser that I'm singing on different evenings is not the same, but it's not comparable to jazz. I mean, it's both aspects. It's this political aspect and also the freedom to improvise.

Presenter19:18

Tell me then about your next piece of music. It's uh it's the fifth, I think.

Thomas Quasthoff19:22

Um yeah, Gerard Susset is the what shall I say the French answer of Fischer Discow. He was the bariton uh in the sixties and seventies and a wonderful singer, and especially with a French repertoire, and I'm a big admirer of his music making and voice.

Speaker 320:15

Hmm, save Lero.

Presenter20:27

Gerard Souzay singing De Bussy's Beau Soir, accompanied by Dalton Baldwin. I want to ask you, Thomas Kostoff, about your the beginnings of your attitude to singing, how you developed your style and how you developed your technique.

Thomas Quasthoff20:42

Well, at the beginning, of course, it was very nice that there was definitely no pressure. My father discovered that there is a big talent which should be supported.

Thomas Quasthoff20:53

We found a wonderful teacher, Charlotte Elemann, in Hanover.

Thomas Quasthoff20:57

And then we worked together for seventeen years.

Presenter21:01

Can you tell me how old you would have been in the beginning? When did you start?

Thomas Quasthoff21:03

Thirteen

Presenter21:04

thirteen. You mentioned that your your father himself wa was a singer and had a good voice, but did not have a thick enough skin to be a performer. Did did you always know

Thomas Quasthoff21:11

One of the problems was especially at that time he was born in nineteen twenty seven.

Thomas Quasthoff21:17

All the theatres were broken.

Thomas Quasthoff21:19

And he came out of a little North German, very small village. And he was very satisfied in in really to see that I maybe fulfil his dreams that he had.

Presenter21:32

I want to to ask you, though, about th this tendency that that of course you your parents worked so uh dedicatedly to nurture your talent, but at the same time they were very keen that you did establish a good education and you established a good career. What was it that they wanted for you in professional terms?

Thomas Quasthoff21:49

Well, first of all, to put myself in a position where I'm independent and really financially independent.

Thomas Quasthoff21:56

Which is, I think, from the point of view now, totally right. At that point they went very often very much on my nerves. I mean, I think from a special day on there's not only love for your parents, they are they are going on your nerves with their conservative point of view and

Presenter22:14

They wanted you to study law. You did study law.

Thomas Quasthoff22:17

Yeah. Yeah, I did. Well well, to be very honest, I was a member of the university. I didn't study really, honestly. I I really enjoyed my life. It was really the kind of getting totally independent from my parents, which was very important in that time.

Speaker 122:24

Yeah.

Presenter22:24

Stop being rid of the

Presenter22:26

Coach.

Presenter22:34

And how easy was it for you to live independently? I noted in the middle of the page. But but I noted in reading your memoirs that there were, for me, shocking instances of just very casual cruelty that people would dish out to you. You ask somebody in the library to get you a high up booth and they say, Can't you see I'm studying?

Thomas Quasthoff22:51

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, but that's German. I wouldn't say that this is only German. Well, the German can be very rude.

Presenter22:52

Uh

Presenter22:58

Hmm.

Speaker 322:58

Yeah.

Thomas Quasthoff22:58

Yeah, I mean, the German mentality is sometimes very strange.

Presenter23:03

I want to ask you one more question about uh about your student days. I I note from your memoirs quite a lot of it interestingly takes place in bars when you are a hard drinking

Thomas Quasthoff23:11

I did hard living students. I would say I do still, but uh not really bars. I no, you weren't you weren't a hard living student?

Presenter23:18

I

Thomas Quasthoff23:20

No. No. No. You know, we are when when you are twenty two or twenty three, of course you have parties. Yeah. And of course I mean, I there were not parties where you drink peppermint tea the whole time.

Presenter23:28

Yeah.

Presenter23:33

I'm glad.

Thomas Quasthoff23:34

Uh

Presenter23:35

Tell me about your next piece of music, then.

Thomas Quasthoff23:37

Um it's Chikoria again. It's a wonderful, well played, wonderful composition, uh romantic, and it's wonderful music to relax. The title is called Love Castle.

Thomas Quasthoff23:51

Yeah.

Speaker 323:51

Just a dummy, just a double chip, just a dummy, just a dumb chip, and just

Presenter24:49

Chick Korea and Love Castle. Thomas Kostov, I've been watching films of some of your performances and and it's interesting to me how engaged and participative on some occasions the audience seems to be with what you do. Why do you think that is? And are you deliberately trying to engage them whilst they're there?

Thomas Quasthoff25:07

Um, I think I'm a very communicating artist, and what I'm always doing, even in recitals.

Thomas Quasthoff25:15

is I can show them how much fun it is to do it, and that I would want to include the audience.

Thomas Quasthoff25:22

On my journey, not saying, Here I am, there you are, now eat this. Very often if you do a recital and and the intermission is over and one or two persons are coming too late, I'm on stage and I'm moving my head and saying, Welcome back, or you know, something.

Thomas Quasthoff25:41

which shows, Oh, thank God there's a human being on stage who has fun and not this kind of untouchable classical intellectual sculpture.

Presenter25:50

Didn't you once say to a woman who was leaving, don't go yet. You know, there's more to come. There's more to come.

Thomas Quasthoff25:52

The door.

Thomas Quasthoff25:54

You maybe missed the best. Yes, I did this in Boston. What did she do? She stayed.

Thomas Quasthoff26:01

Now what I didn't know was that they locked the doors.

Presenter26:07

Your straightforwardness is evident in many of the things that you say and do, and certainly is here today. Something that you said, and it goes back to what you were talking about a moment or two ago, is about your fellow Germans. And you said once that about seventy million Germans are disabled spiritually, ethically. They just can't see it. I am intrigued by what you meant in saying that. Can you explain it a little for me?

Thomas Quasthoff26:31

Well, very often the reaction of people seeing me the first time is, Oh my god.

Thomas Quasthoff26:37

And they expect a total frustrated, depressed, helpless little piece of meat. What shall I say? I mean and how would you call if you are permanently unsatisfied? How would you call if you're permanently looking that the neighbour has a new car or the nicest uh a more nicer garden or a bigger house or or more important guests? I don't know. I mean, for me, this is also a kind of disability. I live a very satisfying life, I do. And I'm not looking to others what they have, what I don't have. I'm happy with what I have, and I try to work on this. But family life and to make my well, I've now three girls. I wanted to have a a m a man dog, but my

Presenter26:57

The end.

Speaker 126:57

Yeah.

Thomas Quasthoff27:29

Women succeeded, so we have a female dog.

Thomas Quasthoff27:33

So I have three ladies now at home, and my only work is to make them happy. So I'm surrounded.

Speaker 327:39

So I'm going to

Presenter27:40

Uh

Speaker 327:40

Rap

Thomas Quasthoff27:41

By women, and I try to make them happy. This is my work, and it's a nice work.

Presenter27:46

It's a life's work, I can tell you. Tell me about your next piece of music, then.

Thomas Quasthoff27:46

It's fine.

Thomas Quasthoff27:50

Um the next piece of music is one of my personal favourite pieces. Schlummat ein ir Matten augen from the Bachkantata Ichabegenoek, played by the Berlin Baroque Orchestra, soloists and led by Rainer Kusmau, sang by myself.

Speaker 328:19

I let some

Speaker 328:42

Quiet sound cold singing.

Speaker 328:57

At times on the leaves tour.

Presenter29:07

My castaway, Thomas Kwostoff, singing Schlummacht ein ir Matten Augen Fall asleep, you weary eyes, from Bach's cantata Ich Habegenoog, I have enough, with the Berlin Baroque soloists, led by Rainer Kusmal. You're here in London for the residency at at the at the Bach.

Thomas Quasthoff29:23

Yes, I have a artist in residence at the moment at the Barbican Center, including five concerts, and I'm really looking forward to this.

Presenter29:30

We were talking just before that piece of music, Thomas, about how much you choose to stay at home. You turn down a lot of work. You choose to be at home.

Thomas Quasthoff29:38

Uh you know, if you have had a life like me traveling permanently round the planet, I saw so many.

Thomas Quasthoff29:45

marriages of singer colleagues which didn't work.

Thomas Quasthoff29:49

because one part was permanently away.

Thomas Quasthoff29:53

That I swore really to myself: if I have a family, I really want to be aware that this will not happen.

Thomas Quasthoff30:03

I'm in the wonderful situation now really to choose what I want to do. And now I'm a little bit more settled saying now it's a different part of my life. I have a family and I'm responsible for my family and I love to be responsible also for them. And of course, of teaching. I if you take the responsibility

Thomas Quasthoff30:23

For young students you have to be there, and uh I want to be there for them.

Presenter30:29

Is it true you asked your wife to marry you within a week of meeting her?

Thomas Quasthoff30:32

Yes.

Presenter30:33

What did she say?

Thomas Quasthoff30:33

No, I didn't. Oh, so I didn't ask her. I said, you are the person I will marry.

Presenter30:35

Oh, so it's not.

Thomas Quasthoff30:40

And then my mother got very sick, and we went, of course, like every couple, strong characters came together through a crisis. Finally the result was that we are now much closer together and much more caring about each other and about the wishes that the other person has.

Presenter30:59

No, but

Thomas Quasthoff30:59

No, but I was very fast, I'm sorry. Don't apologize.

Presenter31:01

That's a don't apologize.

Presenter31:03

Um now, of course, this is Desert Island Discs, and I am about to cast you away on to this imaginary desert island. You will be on your own entirely.

Presenter31:12

How will you cope with that?

Thomas Quasthoff31:13

Even without my wife?

Presenter31:15

Even without your wife.

Thomas Quasthoff31:16

impossible. So that will be definitely a situation which never happens. Okay. Hopefully. To be very honest, my father is now in a situation like being on a

Thomas Quasthoff31:26

well, so-called island alone. He was married to my mother fifty-four years and my mother died this year on the first of January after a long fight against the disease. She had a very bad form of atherosclerosis. And she she got even with this disease eighty two, we were all in the wonderful situation that we were surrounding when she was dying, which was very, very moving. And especially for her, the last song is a kind of saying bye-bye and remembering to my mom with my favorite conductor and very, very close friend, Simon Rettel. And even I would call even the Berlin Philharmonic a kind of my orchestra and friends because I just did the Sylvester concert knowing that my mother was gonna die. And my mother really forced herself through the last dialysis to be able to see this. And then we went very early with the train from Berlin to Hanover and six hours later she was dead. So she was really waiting to say bye bye to me and I'm very, very thankful that I had the time really to thank her for everything what she did.

Presenter33:45

The Adagietto, from Mahler's Fifth Symphony, played by the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle. Uh, Sir Thomas, I will give you the Bible, and we normally give the complete works of Shakspere, but you can have Goethe, if you'd prefer. I don't know which of those you'd prefer. Goethe is okay. Okay. And one other book.

Thomas Quasthoff34:07

But I think one of the most moving books I've ever read in the last

Thomas Quasthoff34:12

Ten years is the biography of Nelson Mandela. The Long Walk to Freedom. Yeah.

Presenter34:17

The Long Walk to Freedom.

Thomas Quasthoff34:20

It's a wonderful, wonderful example to live with your character in the same way.

Presenter34:28

And what what would your luxury be to take with you to the island?

Thomas Quasthoff34:31

Um a little plane that I can go home and to see my wife's.

Presenter34:35

Not allowed. Not nothing practical. No. We're quite strict here.

Thomas Quasthoff34:36

Impact.

Thomas Quasthoff34:38

Oh shit.

Thomas Quasthoff34:42

Um a coffee machine with a little coffee and maybe a nice some nice bottles of wine.

Presenter34:49

Okay, it's probably going to be one or the other. But you know, you can choose. You can choose which one. I'll give you the choice of either of those, but they are certainly not.

Thomas Quasthoff34:55

Okay, if I am alone on an island, you know, nobody cares if I'm drunken or not, so I prefer red wine then.

Presenter35:01

I think that was a good choice. The red wine over the coffee.

Thomas Quasthoff35:02

Yeah.

Presenter35:04

And if you had to choose just one of the eight discs to take with you, which one single disc would you take?

Thomas Quasthoff35:11

The Malafive.

Thomas Quasthoff35:12

Definitely.

Presenter35:14

Thomas Kostov, thank you very much for letting us hear your desktop.

Thomas Quasthoff35:16

You're more than welcome. Thank you.

Presenter35:25

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.