Benjamin Appl 'Forbidden Fruit'

Benjamin Appl has the highest profile of the three young singers being discussed. He is a former ‘Gramophone’ Young Artist of the Year, a BBC New Generation Artist, and has sung at most of Europe’s major concert venues and in New York’s Carnegie Hall. He was also mentored by the late, great Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, who was very discriminating about selecting his pupils. Appl’s voice is undoubtedly glamorous: a very beautiful lyric baritone, capable of a wide range of tone-colour. To my ears, he is not particularly comfortable when singing forte at the top of his range but in this recital he plays to his very considerable strengths, generally singing well within himself and choosing repertoire than allows him to exploit his gift for word painting. To quote Appl’s booklet note ‘Faure’s In paradisum bookends the album and thus takes the listener through a story-arc from paradise, being cast out to find peace again. Individual quotations from the Bible are illuminated musically as if through a kaleidoscope.’ This is an imaginative way to build a programme and is generally very convincing, although I should have preferred the quotations to be simply printed: Appl reads them between the songs, and I find the result precious and unidiomatic: his English is good but it is still quite heavily accented and nothing worthwhile is added by the enterprise.

Unsurprisingly, Appl is most successful when singing German repertoire and his performances of several Wolf songs, Strauss’s ‘Das Rosenband’ and Schubert’s ‘Gretchen am Spinnrade’ (for example) are quite exquisite. Schubert’s ‘Heidenroslein’ is rather over interpreted, in a song like this less is certainly more. Appl’s occasional gilding of the lily is most apparent when singing in English: ‘I will give my love an apple’ is not straightforward enough, and Appl does not help his cause by separating the two ps in ‘apple’ in the German manner. Quilter’s ‘Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal’ would also have benefitted from a less fussy treatment although one is grateful for the gorgeous tone Appl lavishes on it. Additionally, the irony of a German baritone singing an English song rejected by a Welsh tenor (see above) is ra naughtther delicious. My final qualification concerns Leonello Casucci’s ‘Just a Gigolo’. Benjamin Appl joins the many ‘classically’ trained singers who think they can sing American ‘popular’ music effectively. Like most of his colleagues, he can’t… To be fair, he has more success with Lothar Brune’s ‘Kann den Liebe Sunde sein?’ a jazzy cabaret number on the lighter side.

Other than that, I have nothing but praise. Apart from his beautiful lieder singing, Benjamin Appl proves a fine interpreter of French melodies. I was particularly grateful for some very characterful Poulenc. ‘L’Offrande’ in particular, is very nicely done, with an extremely naughty orgasmic whimper after the young woman ‘makes use’ of the candle she was going to offer to the god of love. Kurt Weill’s ‘Youkali’ (French text) is also sung as to the manner born. James Baillieu accompanies beautifully throughout, and is rewarded with a solo spot-light for ‘In Paradisum’, from Faure’s Requiem, in his own arrangement for piano, which begins and ends this delightful recital.

All three CDs are handsomely presented. The three singers are good looking young chaps and thus feature prominently in the art work. James Newby is pictured in a hunky lumberjack’s shirt staring at the ground in gloomy refection, standing beside a reed fringed river (the Styx perhaps?). Benjamin Appl is got up like the subject of various flower and fruit themed Renaissance paintings. (This is actually very effective: an image of him gazing at a split pomegranate while holding a box of cascading fruit is impressively old master like). Elgan Llyr Thomas is pictured dishevelled and tear-stained on his CD cover; pictures of him in the booklet find him looking far more cheerful.

If this review appears to have released too much of my inner Beckmesser I’d like to end by emphasizing how much I enjoyed all three of these CDs and any criticism is testament to my belief these fine artists deserve to be judged by the very highest standards. Anyone buying one, two or all of these recordings will certainly not be disappointed.