Double delight
I have had the good fortune and privilege to hear both Dietrich Fischer-dieskau and Benjamin Appl (see BBC Music Magazine Interview, January) perform Schubert’s Winterreise – 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 Fischerdieskau five times, beginning with national service in West Berlin in 1955/1956, when I saw him as Posa in Verdi’s Don Carlos (apparently his first major role in opera a few years earlier) and the Count in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro (both sung in German). Then we were living in Coventry in 1962 and were at the premiere of Britten’s War Requiem, 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. Roger Belbin, via email