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Pianist Daan Boertien and baritone Benjamin Appl offered a watercolor of Schubert's Winterreise to the audience at the town hall concert.
© Setzer
Landsberg – When baritone Benjamin Appl sings songs, an image emerges.
“For me, art song with piano is often like a painter painting a small watercolor painting,” says the 41-year-old in an interview with BR.
A picture that he creates with a “fine brush”.
The audience saw Appl's watercolor of “Winterreise” at the town hall concert on Sunday evening: a song cycle without mannerism and an interpreter who puts the work in the foreground.
“Scary songs” is what Franz Schubert called his “Winterreise” setting of Wilhelm Müller’s poems, which the composer completed in 1827 at the age of 30 – a year before his death.
The “horrific” refers to the pessimistic mood of the 24 songs, almost entirely in a minor key, full of melancholy and longing for death, but also a touch of horror, as was hip in the Black Romantic period at the end of the 18th century – see ETA Hoffmann’s “Sandman” .
A hotspot of romance: hiking as an escape from the restrictive state - and as a retreat into the interior.
The lyrical self of Winterreise also wanders.
But Schubert's song cycle has no 'plot'; it is rather a series of snapshots.
The piano voice is a partner to the singing voice and onomatopoeically 'illustrates' the barking of the dogs “In the Village” or the cawing of the crows in the song of the same name.
The Dutch pianist Daan Boertien places the piano part behind the singing voice - which means that the musical narrative voice sometimes becomes a little too 'quiet'.
Boertien seems to adapt to Appl.
In contrast to his teacher Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, he is very reserved in his interpretation of the song cycle.
Only slight movements of his hands accompany his voice modulation: from a velvety whisper to a dramatic declamation that is reminiscent of music from silent film sequences.
For Appl from Regensburg, the focus is on the composition: he reflects his emotions in his voice - the text is sometimes just a footnote, even if the singer describes his interpretation of Winterreise as a “triangle between lyricist, composer and performer”.
The text 'neglect' does not detract from the high intensity of the evening.
Appl emphasizes that each of his “winter trips” is different.
Because the baritone interacts with the audience, through eye contact, by taking the listener on a very personal journey.
Appl undertook a special “winter trip” for a BBC film, as he tells it: on the Julier Pass in Graubünden, at an altitude of 2,284 meters.
The day before the recording it was still autumn, “on the day of the recording we were snowed in in the car for four hours in a blizzard.” Singing in sub-zero temperatures “was a challenge,” says Appl.
“But it was a fantastic project.”
How much Appl puts the music in the foreground is also evident in the conversation with him: “There isn't much in Schubert's music,” he says, “there is not a note superfluous.” At the beginning he was on stage with the song cycle “ “almost lost”.
“But it’s just good music.
You feel a direct truthfulness, you feel the person.” And that’s important to Appl, which is why, according to the BR interview, he would have loved to get to know Schubert, “perhaps in a Heurigen local.”
The Schubert that Appl and Boertien presented in the sold-out ballroom was exciting, intense, highly sensitive and met with great sympathy: the audience thanked him with shouts of bravo and enthusiastic applause.