What’s on this 2024-25 season

Celebrity Song Recital with baritone Benjamin Appl and pianist James Baillieu

Friday, 7th March, 2025, 7.30 pm
St Chad's Church, Shrewsbury
A composite image of the two performers, each in dark clothing against a dark background with their faces highlighted
Homage to Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

Songs by Franz Schubert, Albert Fischer-Dieskau, Klaus Fischer-Dieskau, Johannes Brahms, Hugo Wolf, Aribert Reimann, Christian Sinding, Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky, Eduard Künneke, Hanns Eisler, Edvard Grieg, Samuel Barber, Benjamin Britten, Carl Loewe, Franz Grothe, Clara Schumann, and Carl Maria von Weber.

From Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau's birth in 1923, we will explore his experiences in childhood, in wartime – including being a prisoner-of-war, friendship, loss and marriage, finishing with his death just short of his 87th birthday in 2012.

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau would have been 100 years old on May 28, 2025. He shone a light on German Lieder unlike almost any other artist and gave it new life in the modern day. His singing reached so many people and he touched their hearts with the art of song. To this day he is considered to be a source of inspiration, a role model to thousands of singers, with many of his recordings remaining unsurpassed.

Baritone Benjamin Appl is celebrated for a voice that “belongs to the last of the old great masters of song” with “an almost infinite range of colours” (Süddeutsche Zeitung), and for performances “delivered with wit, intelligence and sophistication” (Gramophone magazine). A former BBC New Generation Artist (2014-16), Wigmore Hall Emerging Artist and ECHO Rising Star (2015-16), Benjamin was also awarded Gramophone Award Young Artist of the Year (2016).

Described by The Daily Telegraph as “in a class of his own” James Baillieu is one of the leading song and chamber music pianists of his generation. He has given solo and chamber recitals throughout the world and collaborates with a wide range of singers and instrumentalists including Benjamin Appl, Jamie Barton, Ian Bostridge, Allan Clayton, Annette Dasch, Lise Davidsen, the Elias and Heath Quartets, Dame Kiri te Kanawa, Adam Walker, and Pretty Yende.

Watch Benjamin and James reimagine Schubert's song cycle Winterreise in the wintry setting of an Alpine landscape. Available on BBC iPlayer and available until the middle of February 2025.

Benjamin Appl was a guest on BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg on 15th December. He sang a lovely version of ‘Silent Night’, accompanied by guitar, which features on his new Christmas album. This programme is available for 11 months from 15th December 2024 and you will find Benjamin at the end, at around 46 minutes into the programme. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00260pk/sunday-with-laura-kuenssberg-can-labour-stop-the-boats

Benjamin Appl reminisces: At a public master class in Schwarzenberg, Austria, I was able to get to know my greatest idol and work with him for the first time. To this day, I consider this encounter and the resulting years of collaboration to be one of the greatest gifts of my professional life. For me he was more than “just” a teacher: he helped me considerably with technical and interpretive ideas, but also advised me in the art of performing on stage and crafting programs. He was a real mentor to me in so many ways. I feel fortunate that I was able to see him just before his death, in the spring of 2012 at his home on Lake Starnberg and that I can cherish that final memory.

In the last few months I was able to go through Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau's private documents and, in his diary entries, letters and notes, gain an insight into the private person that Fischer-Dieskau was. This evening’s recital is dedicated to him, and is intended to explore the life of the great baritone and unveil the many facets of his personality. Alongside music, I share anecdotes, travel reports, excerpts from letters along with my personal insights and memories.

TICKETS

£22
Children and full-time students £11

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