WA2K Radio is now on the air

Thomas Quasthoff (born November 9, 1959) is a German bass-baritone. Although his reputation was initially based on his performance of Romantic lieder, Quasthoff has a range from the Baroque cantatas of Bach to solo jazz improvisations.

Quasthoff was born in Hildesheim, Germany, with serious birth defects caused by his mother's exposure during pregnancy to the drug thalidomide which was prescribed as an antiemetic to combat her morning sickness. Quasthoff is 1.34 m (4' 4¾") tall[1] due to shortening of the long bones in his legs, and he has phocomelia of the upper extremities with very short or absent long bone .

Winterreise (Winter Journey) is a song cycle for voice and piano by Franz Schubert (D. 911, published as Op. 89 in 1828), a setting of 24 poems by Wilhelm Müller. It is the second of Schubert's two great song cycles on Müller's poems, the earlier being Die schöne Müllerin (D. 795, Op. 25, 1823). Both were originally written for tenor voice but are frequently transposed to suit other vocal ranges - the precedent being established by Schubert himself. These two works have posed interpretative demands on listeners and performers due to their scale and structural coherence. Although Ludwig van Beethoven's cycle An die ferne Geliebte (To the Distant Beloved) had been published earlier, in 1816, Schubert's two cycles hold the foremost place in the history of the genre.