Big Deals.

Notable performers blow through New York all the time, but, now and then, there appears one who makes you stop and wonder. At the end of this past season, we had (at least) two such performers, one approaching famous, the other less known, but both striking in their own ways, and in similar ways.

We'll begin with Thomas Quasthoff: as remarkable a human being as he is a musician. He is a German bass-baritone, and he has acquired a large following. His concerts sell out, and his records sell fast. He has everything required to be a great singer: a supremely beautiful and adaptable voice; a rock-solid technique; keen musical intelligence; and those qualities that sometimes go by the name "intangibles." When he sings Bach, for example, we're tempted to resort to one of the worst cliches: It is a "religious experience."

It is Bach that Quasthoff sang in New York recently, with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. He sang two cantatas -- including the immortal "Ich habe genug" -- and then signaled that he wanted to sing an encore. What, an encore? Impossible after such music! Quasthoff acknowledged as much in his remarks to the audience: but he went ahead and sang one anyway. And it was Kern and Hammerstein's "Ol' Man River" -- kind of the American national anthem for basses (and bass-baritones, for that matter). This was surprising, audacious, and thrilling. Quasthoff's singing of the piece was utterly idiomatic, and suave. Paul Robeson was forgotten.

Quasthoff, in the best tradition of touring singers, knows how to push his audiences' buttons. He's also known to give his American audiences "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," at encore time. A generosity of spirit, and an embrace of all humanity, shine through him.

Then there's the matter of Quasthoff's physical situation. Everyone who writes about him has to consider, I suppose, whether to mention this. I've written about him several times, and never have -- yet it's not irrelevant, to his life as a whole, to the totality of his achievement. Quasthoff is -- to use a shockingly crude term -- a "thalidomide baby." He was born in 1959, and was not expected to have anything like a normal life. And, of course, he hasn't: He has had an extraordinary, exalted life.

Singing is an intensely physical, not to say athletic, act. In a film for German television, Quasthoff described himself as follows: "1.34 meters tall, short arms, seven fingers -- four right, three left -- large, relatively well-formed head, brown eyes, distinctive lips. Profession: singer." When he performs, he stands on a podium. While singing, he sways from side to side, perpetually, sometimes rather violently. Whatever his equipment, and whatever adjustments he has to make, he gets the job done, to put it mildly.

Among his recent discs are two featuring lieder of Brahms, Schubert, and Liszt. (Quasthoff's label is Deutsche Grammophon, as perhaps befits this son of Germany and proud, dedicated professor at Detmold Conservatory.) The voice is plush, but also clean. Quasthoff employs velvet, but also a little metal, if that can be imagined. A natural musician, he grasps the meaning of a score, and text, and conveys it to you. He indulges in no false emoting. He is without eccentricity or affectation. In everything he tries, he is honest and authoritative.

Quasthoff is even bound for the operatic stage, scheduled to appear as Don Fernando in Fidelio next spring at Salzburg. This is a significant and brave step, and the last piece in a complete singing career. Every trite expression comes to mind about Quasthoff: that he is unstoppable, indomitable, an example of human triumph. And it's all true.

He has caught the attention of the broader world, naturally, being profiled in People, Esquire, and Time. He has even been treated to a segment on 60 Minutes -- not the usual lot of the German bass-baritone.

And yet Quasthoff is loath to make too much of the peculiar challenges he has faced. As British music writer Norman Lebrecht tells it, he has been withering about Andrea Bocelli, the Italian tenor who is blind, and a crossover sensation. "Why are big conductors making records with this guy?" Quasthoff said. "I am a teacher, and I know how hard it is to learn classical singing. He is not a classical artist." Asked whether Bocelli might have been formed artistically by the experience of adversity, Quasthoff retorted, "Obviously not formed well enough."

Quasthoff would be astounding enough as a "normal" great singer (!). But surely the conductor Colin Davis has a point when he says, "He is a lesson in life," too. Quasthoff lives a life of heroic dimensions -- whether he likes it or not.

Our second arresting musician is Natalia Gutman, a Russian cellist. Never heard of her? Neither have most people, including those who know something about music. She has not had a big career in the United States, spending most of her time in Europe. Also, she has labored somewhat in the shadow of another Russian cellist, Mstislav Rostropovich, who was, in fact, a teacher of Gutman's. Is there room enough for two? There ought to be.

In the final weeks of the New York Philharmonic's season, Gutman appeared with conductor Kurt Masur to play the Cello Concerto No. 1 of Alfred Schnittke -- a work that is dedicated to her, and of which she must be the foremost exponent. Her playing was simply stupendous. She caused one's jaw to drop. She sort of roused one out of the routine of concerts. At every level -- technical, musical, emotional -- Gutman was extraordinary. One said, "This is what music can do." Schnittke -- a Russian composer of German ancestry -- endured a lot in the USSR, anand we hear it in the piece, and every ounce of it was brought out by Gutman, but with no excess. This was, above all, honest playing -- and honesty is one of Gutman's hallmarks. Small wonder that the great Russian pianist Sviatoslav Richter said, "She is an incarnation of truthfulness in music."

Judging from what literature exists on her, it seems that the musicians most important to Gutman have been Rostropovich, Richter, and her late husband, Oleg Kagan, a violinist (not to be confused with Leonid Kogan, another Russian violinist). (Oleg Kagan was first married to the pianist Elisabeth Leonskaya. Thus he achieved the feat of marrying two of his country's very best musicians.) Gutman's career was crimped by Soviet authorities somewhat, owing to her association with the troublesome Rostropovich. But her career has been able to blossom particularly in the last decade and a half.

Her recordings are fairly numerous, although not always easy to find. She has recorded many of the big concertos, including the most popular of them all, the Dvorak, which she performs with Wolfgang Sawallisch and the Philadelphia Orchestra (on Seraphim Classics). Her playing on this disc is clean and graceful, and not the least histrionic -- almost intimate. At times it seems more a piece of chamber music than a bursting Romantic concerto. Hers is the kind of playing -- almost demure -- not necessarily expected from a Russian, especially in a work like this. Just possibly, it is these expectations that Gutman means to confound.

The cellist is heard on the latest recording of the popular pianist Martha Argerich, of various Schumann chamber works (EMI Classics). Gutman joins Argerich for, among other things, the three Fantasiestucke, Op. 73, pieces usually reserved for clarinet, but here taken by the cello. This performance is sighing, wistful, nostalgic, and exquisitely judged. It is Romantic and heartfelt without being sobby. There is a remarkable evenness of sound in Gutman's playing, from the lowest notes to the highest. It is one voice. This is something that singers strive for, and, indeed, Gutman's playing is frequently singer-like, as string playing -- and much other playing -- often ought to be. Gutman affords these simple pieces dignity and nobility. Even Argerich behaves!

Where Gutman is most plentifully represented is in a series of discs from Live Classics. This is a label established with the express purpose of memorializing her husband, Kagan, whom the founders thought neglected on disc. Many of the recordings are of chamber music, played by Kagan, Gutman, and their friends. For example, Gutman can be heard with Richter in sonatas of Saint-Saens, Prokofiev, and Britten. The three of them -- husband-and-wife and Richter -- can be heard in trios of Franck and Ravel. These are invaluable additions to the wealth of the world's records.

Fasten, for a moment, on a disc devoted to Mendelssohn. With the pianist Elisso Wirssaladze, Gutman plays a transcription of one of the Songs Without Words. She uses a big, warm, soulful tone, and the entire piece is beautifully "breathed," a song indeed. Here is a musician who pays careful attention to dynamics: and yet, "careful attention" doesn't seem right, because there is no calculation or self-consciousness in Gutman. The music simply comes out right -- as if there were no other way to do it.

Next we have Mendelssohn's Cello Sonata in D Major, Op. 58, a fine work seldom heard. Gutman is exciting, passionate, refined, assured. She conveys this composer's famous sunniness and easygoingness, as well as his contented genius. Gutman has loads of virtuosity -- nothing is beyond her, technically -- but we may take it for granted. The notes are in the bag. What remains is sheer musical expressiveness.

To complete the disc is a trio with Kagan and Wirssaladze -- a happy collaboration.

In the world at large, Gutman may be unsung: but as more people hear her in the flesh, and on her recordings, she will grow more "sung," a cellist of the first rank, a performer regarded by other musicians as a model.