Full circle with Udo Jurgen (and Alfred Brendel and Anne-Sophie Mutter)

Last Friday evening my friend Heinz and his wife invited me to a concert of the German- speaking world’s singing icon Udo Jurgen. The 71 years old Austrian-born singer who lives in Switzerland had a huge following and that one night concert in Zurich attracted a strong 10,000 crowd who clapped, cheered, and danced through his repertoire of songs. I had not been to a pop concert in a long time (the last one 20 years ago, a Tina Turner concert in Kuala Lumpur gave me a throbbing in my ears hours after the concert) but I truly enjoyed this one although I could not make much of the German sung and spoken throughout.

At his age Udo Jurgen still had a charisma and a strong commanding voice. The crowd, old an young loved him and he received endless gifts and flowers from them throughout the concert. The accompanying band with some 15 members, the music soloists and the three African-American back up singers were all superb. We had VIP tickets and sat seven rows from the stage and it was a truly enjoyable concert.

It was a full circle for me with Udo Jurgen. In the early 70s, my brother Ngah married Anita from Germany. When they set up home in Johor Bahru, I loved to visit their house during my term break from University and listen to or borrow the many Udo Jurgen records they had in their collection. I remember one of his songs “Warum nur Warum’ – “Why oh Why’ I think, was recorded by the late Matt Monro as “Walk Away’ and became his biggest international hit ever.

And talking about full circle, it was the same for me with the famous pianist Alfred Brendel and violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter whom I saw performing live at the world-famous annual Luzern Music Festival in 2006 and 2007 consecutively.

In the late 70s my friend Evert gave me some cassettes of Mozart’s piano concertos with solos by Afred Brendel which over time became my favourites. A few years later, I bought a cassette of two Mozart’s violin concertos with solos by Anne-Sophie Mutter under the direction of Herbert Von Karajan. She was all of ten years old when that marvellous recording was made. I liked it so much that I bought a CD version many years later. I never thought I would ever see these two great maestros performing live. The two concerts were indeed such treats for me.

Alfred Brendel presented each audience with a book of his poetry titled “Cursing Bagels".

And Anne-Sophie Mutter joined us and our host for dinner after the concert that evening.

So there you have it! Life is indeed sometimes full of surprises.