Anyone who enjoyed Benjamin Appl’s previous disc, a Schubert recital
(Wigmore Hall Live, 7/16), will recognise the same qualities on this new
album, the first fruit of a newly forged relationship with Sony
Classical. The voice has a burnished, oaky beauty as well as
considerable sweetness (well captured in Sony’s natural engineering),
while the interpretations are suffused with a gentle intelligence, an
instinct for unforced but direct communication and what feels like a
real love for the repertoire. The latter characteristic is even more in
evidence in this project, one which has a disarming personal element: a
carefully assembled programme that explores not just the abstract
concept of ‘Heimat’ but also the young baritone’s relationship with his
two homelands, original and adopted.
It’s a delightful selection, split up further into evocative
subheadings, which mixes songs familiar and less well known, the
expected with the unexpected. Schubert, Wolf and Brahms dominate the
larger, German part of the programme, beautifully performed. But we also
have the disarming, twinkling simplicity of Reger’s ‘Des Kindes Gebet’,
as well as Adolf Strauss’s suave ‘Ich weiss bestimmt’, presented with a
gentle pathos and sophistication that quietly underlines the tragedy of
its having been composed in Terezín – here, as throughout, the
piano-playing of James Baillieu is superb.
Appl’s move to the UK is announced in a
confused whirl with Poulenc’s Hyde Park
and then a half a dozen songs in English, with a slightly more folksy
tone. You’ll have to go a long way to hear more enchanting accounts of
Britten’s ‘Greensleeves’, Ireland’s ‘If there were dreams to sell’ or
Bishop’s ‘Home, sweet home’. Appl’s English, unsurprisingly, cannot be
faulted. The two Grieg songs that make up the epilogue are outstanding,
too. But the final moments of an otherwise near-ideal account of ‘Ein
Traum’ highlight one reservation. The voice is very beautiful across a
broad range but it remains a great deal happier up to
forte than above it, where it loses flexibility and can develop a slightly fuzzy, even woofy quality.
It’s an issue that will hopefully be ironed out as Appl develops. As
it is, though, there is more than enough quality in his singing, and
pleasure to be had from his musicianship and interpretative instincts,
for this charming and often moving disc to be confidently recommended. (Gramophone)
Anyone who enjoyed Benjamin Appl’s previous disc, a Schubert recital
(Wigmore Hall Live, 7/16), will recognise the same qualities on this new
album, the first fruit of a newly forged relationship with Sony
Classical. The voice has a burnished, oaky beauty as well as
considerable sweetness (well captured in Sony’s natural engineering),
while the interpretations are suffused with a gentle intelligence, an
instinct for unforced but direct communication and what feels like a
real love for the repertoire. The latter characteristic is even more in
evidence in this project, one which has a disarming personal element: a
carefully assembled programme that explores not just the abstract
concept of ‘Heimat’ but also the young baritone’s relationship with his
two homelands, original and adopted. 
“A hundred years ago, a song was just a song – it belonged to whoever
sang it while they were singing it. Any music could be ‘popular’ music,
with barrow boys whistling Verdi arias in the street,” writes vocalist
John Potter in the liner notes to his newest ECM recording, Amores Pasados.
Yet, as he points out, there eventually became a category of “art
song,” as distinct from popular and folk song; the advent of radio and
recordings brought professional interpreters of those art songs,
superseding amateur singers gathered around a piano with Schubert sheet
music in hand. As the 20th century wore on, the opposite of
art song became known as the “pop song,” with purveyors of the latter
often singing the songs themselves, blending original lyrics with their
music. With Amores Pasados, Potter aims to refract the concepts
of art song and popular song through a double prism. Along with
interpreting folk-inflected songs by composers from the Renaissance to
the 20th century, he performs art songs written by English artists known for their
feats in popular music: John Paul Jones (of Led Zeppelin fame), Genesis
keyboardist Tony Banks and Sting. 
