For Dieter: Hommage à Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

As a glance through this month's new releases may have already reminded you, the centenary of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau’s birth falls next Wednesday, with fine commemorative anthologies from Warner and SOMM marking the occasion. The most imaginative and heartfelt tribute, however, comes courtesy of his final pupil Benjamin Appl, fresh from a collaborative album with another grand old man – Hungarian composer György Kurtág, who turned 99 in February.

I’ve always thought that there was something pleasingly old-school about Appl’s approach to Lieder, and his love and respect for these two elder statesmen (both of whom could be exacting masters) shine brightly through both projects. This homage to his former teacher is no mere themed recital, but an objet d’art in its own right – the accompanying hardcover book includes a fascinating gallery of Fischer-Dieskau’s own paintings and caricatures, photographs from the family archives and snapshots of ephemera (my favourite being a ‘smoking forbidden’ sign from a Japanese concert, hastily amended with an exemption for ‘DFD’).

Appl (who writes every bit as well as he sings) supplies his own up-close-and-personal biography of his mentor, peppered with quotations from diaries and Fischer-Dieskau’s affectionate correspondence with the likes of ‘Danny’ [Barenboim], ‘Lenny’ [Bernstein] and ‘Ben’ [Britten]. But the most moving storytelling unfolds through the music itself, with the recital divided into chapters on ‘Dieter’’s childhood, wartime experience and internment in a prisoner-of-war camp, marriages, bereavements, and eventual status as mastersinger and muse.

Some of the songs were staples of Fischer-Dieskau’s repertoire, others were composed for him, and there’s the odd item which has been chosen primarily for narrative purposes – a quirky solo piano interlude from the 1952 German rom-com Vater braucht eine Frau ('Father Needs a Wife'), for instance, is included to reference his second marriage to Ruth Leuwerick, who starred in the film and briefly became stepmother to the widowed Fischer-Dieskau’s three children. (Appl’s respect for his mentor doesn’t preclude the odd welcome flash of levity: Schubert’s ‘Liebhaber in allen Gestalt’ tips the wink to his turbulent love-life in middle age).

But we begin on the most familiar of turf: the album is effectively a secular thanksgiving service for a great Lieder-singer, and what else but Schubert’s 'An die Musik' could serve as opening-prayer? Appl and James Baillieu (who executes some of the gentlest heartstring-tugs on the album) shape it with the utmost care and reverence, and whilst there’s never a sense of this being a ‘cover-version’ of DFD’s own recordings you may well detect a certain kinship between master and pupil in terms of their meticulous word-painting and overall timbre.

The ‘Early Years’ section features world premiere recordings of pieces by ‘Dieter’’s family: his father Albert’s catchy little setting of Goethe’s ‘Heidenröslein’ (which stands up none too shabbily alongside Schubert’s version), and older brother Klaus’s ‘Wehmut’ and solo piano Nocturne. The printed excerpts from Klaus’s diaries reveal a certain amount of sibling rivalry on his part in those early days, although the boys appear to have reached an entente cordiale in the aftermath of the War and the death of their disabled younger brother Martin at the hands of the Nazis; a spare, haunting song for baritone and cello which Klaus composed for his brother and cellist sister-in-law Irmgard in the late 1940s certainly suggests a new warmth in the relationship.

The chapters focusing on Fischer-Dieskau’s enforced military service in Russia and Italy and subsequent spell in an American POW camp (where he was tasked with singing for his captors and fellow prisoners) are powerfully programmed and performed, particularly Schubert’s great outpouring of Sehnsucht ‘aus Die Götter Griechenlands’ and Debussy’s 'Beau Soir' (sounding almost Bergian in DFD’s own German translation).

Aribert Reimann’s starkly moving Tenebrae and an excerpt from Britten’s War Requiem (again sung in Fischer-Dieskau’s German translation) testify not only to the singer’s ability to inspire great music, but also to his commitment to nurturing cultural reconciliation after the War. And Fischer-Dieskau’s straightforward joy in music-making and teaching comes across too, most notably in Schubert’s ‘An mein Klavier’ and ‘An die Laute’, before the duo bid the master a moving farewell via Schumann’s 'Requiem'. It sets the seal on a classy, comprehensive and cogent musical offering which would doubtless have met with approval from the man himself.

Benjamin Appl and James Baillieu will perform a selection of music from the album (followed by a short Q&A session) at Presto Music on Tuesday 17th June at 6.30pm - free tickets can be reserved via our TicketSource page.