Benjamin Appl

Benjamin Appl

- Recital

Benjamin Appl baritone
James Baillieu piano

Songs by Gustav Mahler, Alma Mahler, George Butterworth, Erich Wolfgang Korngold and others

Infos & Cast

Have you heard of George Butterworth? He was killed by a sniper in the Battle of the Somme during World War One, in August 1916; and it’s in dialogue with Butterworth’s cycle Six Songs from ‘A Shropshire Lad’ that German baritone Benjamin Appl, faithful to his curiosity and musical openness, has built his recital centred around the figure of Gustav Mahler. Or rather, around the composer’s world, for in addition to Mahler’s Ruckert Lieder and a few other songs, this recital features songs by his more or lesser known young colleagues – figures such as Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Alma Mahler, but also other Bohemian-Jewish composers who died in Theresienstadt. It’s a programme written as a dramaturgical question mark, and which can only end with Mahler’s Urlicht, the wonderful song from Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Boy’s Magic Horn) in which its human voice expresses both its desire for transcendence, and its finiteness. This is Benjamin Appl’s third recital at the Grand Théâtre. After his Winterreise in 2019 alongside the legendary Graham Johnson, and then his standing in at short notice for his colleague Simon Keenlyside with pianist Malcolm Martineau during the 22/23 season in a repertoire spanning up to Hungarian master György Kurtág’s formidable Hölderlin-Gesänge, it’s this time with his friend and regular duo partner James Baillieu that Appl will carry us from one bank of the Styx to the other.