Apologies for playing the age card, but in approaching half-a-century of reviewing for the Birmingham Post I have rarely encountered as exciting a duo of young artists as I did last Thursday at Gloucester Music Society.
Having been tipped the wink that this was going to be something very special, I ventured to the edge of our region, and it would be an understatement to say I was far from disappointed in this all-Schumann Lieder recital from baritone Benjamin Appl and accompanist James Cheung.
Appl was the last-ever student of the great Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, and didn’t his mentoring show, with fabulously intelligent and probing colouring of words, a clarity of diction which projected so grippingly in this difficult acoustic, a wonderfully-timbred range of compass, and a body-language which both chilled through the eyes (never looking at any of us, but embracing us all) and thrilled with limb-movement.
And Cheung brought both resonance and delicacy to Schumann’s piano-writing, as vital to the success of each song as the vocal part, his postludes to so many of the offerings compelling frozen acquiescence from the vocalist.
A generous first half (including the gruesomely macabre Hans Christian Andersen settings – this man was no cosy spinner of fireside tales) preceded a Dichterliebe so unified in narration and delivery, both in its musical texts and in its emotional disintegration.
Stephen Johnson’s pre-concert talk (GMS’ first-ever) had prepared us for this, but Appl and Cheung turned it all into a startling, disturbing, never quite consoling listening experience.
