Lines of Life
Songs by Brahms, Schubert and György Kurtág
Benjamin Appl (baritone), György Kurtág, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, James Baillieu (piano)
Alpha Classics ALPHA1145 67:45 mins
Benjamin Appl first worked on the Hölderlin-Gesänge with composer György Kurtág in 2018. It was, by Appl’s account, both an exhausting and a rewarding process, and this album is the fruit of that ongoing process, interspersed with Schubert lieder and seven world premieres of new works by Kurtág.
Appl’s ever-expressive baritone is infinitely characterful here in these diverse settings. He is a thoughtful, revealing interpreter of Kurtág’s verse, and his own admission that he finds one of the Hölderlin poems impenetrable is suitably disarming, not least when the composer himself counters that he had to write the music to find its meaning. The evocative Hölderlin settings are for lone singer, aside from ‘Gestalt und Geist’, into which Kurtág fires full throttle with trombone and tuba. These dark forays into love’s loss and death are achingly evoked by Appl.
Pierre-Laurent Aimard joins him for the spiky Ulrike Schuster settings, from Appl’s bitter ‘Die Zeit’, to the very relatable ‘Ich Weiss Nicht…’: abrupt, stark, tinged with frustration and a dark suggestion of universal truth. James Baillieu joins Appl for the Schubert songs, beautifully expressive, and of the three pianists, the last is – rather fittingly – Kurtág himself, ever sprightly on the keyboard.
He joins Appl for Schubert’s ‘Der Jüngling an der Quelle’ and Brahms’s ‘Sonntag’, the former filled with the gentle keyboard bubbling of the stream in Schubert’s tender, wistful setting of lost love – very touching here – and a tribute to an endeavour which has clearly pleased both.
The last 20 minutes comprises an interview, in German, between Appl and Kurtág, translated in the accompanying booklet.
