Appl/Baillie: Lifelines Review – Baritone Weaves Kurtág and Schubert Together with Talent

The Holywell Music Room, Oxford, was a fine example of the creative programming of the Oxford International Song Festival. The informal but focused recital by Benjamin Appl was full of deeply beautiful music. Over 25 years, the Oxford International Song Festival has taken a creative approach to programming. Benjamin Appl's pairing of Schubert's Lieder with the prickly miniatures of György Kurtág was a perfect example. Your Schubert crowd is not necessarily your Kurtág crew

A perfect example of the creative programming of the Oxford International Festival of Music, Benjamin Apple's casual but focused recital was full of profoundly beautiful music.

Wednesday 14 October 2026 11.27 CEST Last change on Wednesday 14 October 2026 11.32 CEST

For over 25 years, the Oxford International Voice Festival has taken an innovative approach to programming. Benjamin Apple's pairing of Schubert Lieder with György Kortag's spiky miniatures was a perfect example. Your Schubert crowd isn't necessarily your Kurtág crew, and yet Halliwell's 280-year-old music room was packed to the rafters.

Ellen Mohini and Daniel Silcock, one of the festival's young artist duos, kicked things off with a blue-themed recital that showcased Mohini's powerful soprano and Silcock's poetic instincts on the piano. From the inspirational Scottish ballad Kishmul's Galley to Hamilton Harty's passionate sea, their 15 minutes paved the way for Appl and James Bilyeu's satisfying Lines of Life.

The British German baritone is a gifted communicator, connecting songs that could easily have rubbed each other the wrong way. It helps that he worked so hard with Kurtag. As he explained from the stage, he sometimes spends an entire morning on the first line of a song and prepares to work on line two after lunch, but the meticulous composer says, "Shall I start first?" His compelling delivery of these focused pieces of music, many of them unaccompanied, was intensely focused.

Six Hölderlin-Gesänge sets gnomic poetry that is hard enough to understand before the composer ups the ante with notes and rhythm. Apple accommodated their frantic gasps and grunts, and yet at other times, Kurtz's compulsive writing sounded beautiful.

Schubert's choice was linked to common themes of love, longing and loss. The absurdist Totengräbers Heimweh displayed a fragile, ironic quality that found echoes in the melancholic Schäfers Klagelied and the otherwise joyous Die Taubenpost.

There was also vocal beauty, for example, in Viola, one of Schubert's most endearing songs about a violet that could turn saccharine in the wrong hands. Billiot's incredibly clever accompaniment drives the narrative forward here. At times, when you pulled back to soften the tone, the Apple didn't quite get where it wanted, but those moments were few and far between in a rewarding musical journey that was seamless from start to finish.