This recital was to have been shared between Simon Keenlyside and Dorothea Röschmann, both currently appearing in the Magic Flute at Covent Garden. But someone forgot to lock a trapdoor on the Royal Opera's stage, and Keenlyside now has a broken arm. Stoically, he is still going on as Papageno (albeit wearing a cast, which probably does not chime with the costume designer's concept). But he ceded this, the first of a pair of concerts celebrating the songs of Hugo Wolf, to a younger, less established singer.
This, then, was a great opportunity for the Dresden-born baritone Stephan Loges, who took on all but two of the originally programmed songs and performed them so well that only the grumpiest Keenlyside fan could have felt short-changed. Loges, who won the hall's international song competition in 1999, does not yet have vast reserves of tone to his voice, but he knew how to bring out the beauty of Wolf's phrases, and communicated the words strongly. He is well on the way to being a fine lieder singer.
He began somewhat stiffly; even though he warmed to his second song, Heimweh, it wasn't until after the interval that he seemed truly relaxed. Then he gave a sonorous, sustained account of Um Mitternacht. With his accompanist, Malcolm Martineau, he made a dramatic narration out of Der Feuerreiter, and wryly relished the gleeful waltz that ended his last song, Abschied. Though a sometime music reviewer himself, Wolf had clearly enjoyed writing this description of a critic getting kicked down the stairs.
Still, it was Röschmann who stole the show. This was gleaming, exuberant singing; Röschmann's soprano is one of real substance and individuality. She got the recital off to a sumptuous start with the hauntingly beautiful Im Frühling, then brought a softer tone to the bittersweet Verborgenheit, and threw herself into the celebration of spring in Er ist's, saving enough for a striking crescendo in the final bars. Her second selection began in sombre mood. But soon she was up to mischief as a water sprite, a huge contrast with the chesty-voiced battleaxe she then became in Rat einer Alten.
The more serious numbers carried an extraordinarily high emotional charge. Indeed, Röschmann's impassioned expressive touches could perhaps be used a little more sparingly, to greater effect. But with a performance as luxuriant as this, who could complain?
