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Fulfilling music from German duo
THE SPIRIT lifts at the thought of an approaching cooler season in Chennai when there is a general flowering of the arts and the city seems to open itself to visiting artistes.
As a harbinger of good things to come was the visit of Stephen Loges, baritone from Germany, who gave a vocal recital at the Museum theatre on August 26 sponsored by Max Mueller Bhavan. He was brilliantly accompanied on the piano by his wife, Natasha. It would be difficult to find two young artistes with a more dazzling record of achievement. Stephen Logan is a remarkably versatile baritone (between bass and tenor). After his initial training in Germany he moved to London, trained in opera and also won the Wigmore Hall international song competition— "a most communicative artiste, who has given a performance worthy of the great lieder tradition-sculpted singing always sensitive to light and shade". And then it was upwards all the way.
He made his Carnegie Hall debut in a Brahms recital, sang with great names in New York, Washington and San Francisco. With his kind of voice it was not only lieder — it was opera, and oratorio as well as soloist. His wife Natasha was born in Kuwait and continued her musical education briefly at Bangalore and Ooty and won the all India Hilla Khurshedjee prize as the most promising ABRSM musician in 1991.
An outstanding musician she gained a masters degree in analysis and historical musicianship from Kings College London and now continues her doctoral research at the Royal College of Music on the poetry and performers technique of Brahms solo lieder.
Lieder of the Romantic Period — was the title of the recital. Lieder merely means song in German. By the 19th century the traditional lieder was dominated by the poetic line, some of it folksy but mostly intensely lyrical. The recital exposed the themes of Romanticism in the Orient, in Nature with the motif of the Beloved dominating. "How in the morning light you glow around me", "So have I truly lost you", and so on; a group of drunken songs and songs of Narure — "I can hardly wait for the first bloom in the garden".
The songs were in four groups: Schubert-Goethe; Hugo Wolf-Goethe, Brahms-Daumer; and Schumann Dichterliebe. What was really amazing was that these songs, with such a strong sense of period, by European composers in the 19th century, in a foreign language should today in Chennai have been received with such total interest and acceptance. It can only be explained by the recognition of the high quality of the artistic expression, however unfamiliar, and so a connection was established. The strongest feeling the listener was left with was the sense of fulfilment. The partnership between soloist and accompanist was close — the two roles were very interdependent.
Natasha Loges is a stunningly sensitive accompanist. She subtly anticipated, underlined, led and sang through her instrument.
The soloist, equally sensitive and aware, expressed his gamut of emotions with clarity and a very natural kind of style. It was the piano that had the last word! Carrying the listener along a wave of eloquence, the final notes of the last Schumann cadence was heart-stopping.
ANNA ABRAHAM
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