Bass-baritone Thomas Quasthoff is one of the most celebrated classical singers today. He's won three Grammy Awards and performed all over the globe.

Thomas Quasthoff: http://flickr.com/photos/jazzfestwien

Quasthoff just released a new recording of Haydn arias. And he's currently performing them with the New York Philharmonic. Click here for performances

Thomas Quasthoff: http://flickr.com/photos/jazzfestwien

But as Jeff Lunden reports, the singer's path to stardom has been anything but straightforward. Thomas Quasthoff has the kind of voice that makes music critics wax rhapsodic - like Anthony Tomassini of The New York Times.

TOMASSINI: "It's a warm, rich, full, robust sound. There's just a sense of something elemental and honest and true and authoritative. You sit up and listen when he sings."

QUASTHOFF: "My career, in many ways, is extraordinary."

When Thomas Quasthoff says this, he reels off a list of the conductors he works with frequently: Sir Simon Rattle, Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim, James Levine, Riccardo Muti.

QUASTHOFF: "These are the leading conductors that we have, at the moment, in the musical world."

Which would be, under any circumstances, extraordinary. But, in Thomas Quasthoff's case, it's perhaps more so. He was born, almost fifty years ago, in Hildesheim, Germany. While his mother was pregnant, she took the drug Thalidomide to combat morning sickness. As a result, Quasthoff was born with severe defects - shortened arms and legs, missing fingers. Even now, he stands only about four feet tall. But Quasthoff says his parents were determined to give him as regular a life as possible. They pulled him out of a school for the disabled - where there were no distinctions between mental and physical disabilities.

QUASTHOFF: "But it was, at that time very difficult, of course, to find a school to say, "okay, we are taking him." The reaction was very often, "we cannot do this" and "it's too difficult for the teachers" and blah, blah, blah. So, it was not very easy. I think my parents called ten schools and they get nine times "no."

One constant in Quasthoff's young life was music.

QUASTHOFF: "Music was permanently around in our house. I cannot remember not one day that I was listening to music."

Or singing it. Quasthoff began a life-long love affair with music of Bach, while singing in church choirs as a child. By the time he was a teenager, he was studying voice with a private teacher. He wanted to attend a conservatory, but was rejected because his disabilities made it impossible for him to play an instrument. Quasthoff says the rejection turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

QUASTHOFF: "I was at that time, of course, sad. But now, I know that I learned so much more intensively, as a private student, then at the university."

Quasthoff's preparation paid off, when at the age of twenty eight, he won a major vocal competition in Munich. THAT helped launch his international career.

Tenor Michael Schade frequently performs in duo recitals with Quasthoff. He says he's impressed by Quasthoff's ease as a performer - how he can turn a large concert hall into an intimate parlor.

SCHADE: "Thomas walks out onstage and, like in life, you have the feeling that you've always known him. And he looks at his audience - you have a feeling that he looks everyone in the eye - and there's sort of an excited hush that happens. And you suddenly have the feeling that, due to this masterful control that actually Schubert himself, or Brahms or whoever he's singing, is actually talking to you, in persona."

Despite his popularity, Quasthoff limits his concert performances to about fifty dates a year. He spends most of his time in Berlin, where he teaches and lives with his wife and her ten year old daughter.

QUASTHOFF: "So I'm much more - how do you say? - domesticated (laughs) in Berlin. And, um, I'm enjoying it with the bottom of my heart. It's really... maybe it; this is also coming through my singing momentarily. I have this kind of open spirit and mind that definitely helps my music making momentarily, very, very much."

Right now, New Yorkers can enjoy Thomas Quasthoff's music making with the New York Philharmonic. He'll performing Haydn arias through January 27th.

For The World, I'm Jeff Lunden in New York.