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Double delight
I have had the good fortune and privilege to hear both Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Benjamin Appl (see , January) perform Schubert’s – the former with Daniel Barenboim at the Southbank, 1969; the latter with James Baillieu in Kendal, 2017. Due to where I was living, I heard Fischer-Dieskau five times, beginning with national service in West Berlin in 1955/1956, when I saw him as Posa in Verdi’s (apparently his first major role in opera a few years earlier) and the Count in Mozart’s (both sung in German). Then we were living in Coventry, a noteworthy occasion. When we moved near London, we heard Fischer-Dieskau in two recitals during Barenboim’s Summer Music on the South Bank, including the above performance. We retired to live in the Lake District, and Benjamin Appl was in Kendal for Lake District Summer Music twice, in 2015 and 2017. All of these performances can be recalled as among the finest I was lucky enough to hear during nearly 70 years of concert-going.
