Review: Benjamin Appl celebrates Fischer-Dieskau at the Tung Auditorium ****1/2

There’s a much-repeated adage which exhorts its listener to “find someone who looks at you like you’re...magic” (insert similar sentiment here).

But one might equally suggest finding someone who admires and cherishes you the way Benjamin Appl does the late, legendary German lyric baritone and champion of lieder Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.

Appl, currently artist in residence at the Liverpool Phil, was a 12-year-old schoolboy when he first came across ‘FiDi’ whose voice, emanating from a recording, “immediately captured my imagination and moved me in a way I’d never experienced before.”

He later had an opportunity to study at the knee of the older singer as his last pupil, forging a close bond with Fischer-Dieskau in his final years and, after his death in 2012, immersing himself in his letters, books, diaries and photo albums.

Now in the centenary year of the German baritone’s birth, Appl is paying a very personal homage in this emotionally resonant and sensitively conceived recital-come-eulogy, performed at the Tung Auditorium as one of several dates nationwide.

Tomorrow, he reprises the concert at the Wigmore Hall.

I say Appl, but while he brings his lovely sweet and chocolatey baritone, along with elegant phrasing, to the extensive programme of songs either particularly associated with Fischer-Dieskau or whose lyrics illustrate key points in his life, this is a three-man endeavour.

Pianist James Baillieu accompanies Appl in understated but exquisite fashion, while actor James Newall narrates, with warmth and clarity, FiDi’s tumultuous life story from his childhood in Berlin to his wartime experiences, series of heart-breaking family losses, international stardom and questioning final years.

It’s a lot of life to try and squeeze into one evening – the first half only brings listeners to 1947 when Fischer-Dieskau, conscripted into the Wehrmacht as a teen, was repatriated from a prisoner of war camp aged 22.

And while it seems churlish to suggest you can have too much of a good thing, when the music-underpinned narrative rolls into a third hour there is an argument for trimming a little here and there.

Saying that, it’s a wonderful and fascinating celebration of a great talent, and I’ve seldom encountered a quieter, more attentive audience than the one in the Tung last night – so captivated there wasn’t even any clearing of throats let along coughing, even between songs.

Fischer-Dieskau was known for mining the emotional bedrock of a score.

And Appl is also maturing into a fine musical storyteller who, while mindful of technique, explores and evidently relishes the wide range of colours in tone and texture within a piece, while also able to switch with nimbleness from impish to solemnly heartfelt.