Benjamin Appl

German baritone Benjamin Appl studied at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Munich and graduated from the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, where he worked with Rudolf Piernay. He was greatly influenced by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, who mentored and taught him as his last private student until his death in May 2012. He is a member of the Yehudi-Menuhin-Foundation Live Music Now and recipient of many awards, including the 2012 Schubert Prize awarded by the Deutsche-Schubert Gesellschaft.

As an established recitalist he has performed at Carnegie Hall, the Ravinia, Rheingau and Oxford Lieder festivals, deSingel Antwerp, Heidelberger Frühling, and with Graham Johnson at the KlavierFestival Ruhr. He is regularly invited to give recitals at the Wigmore Hall and at the Schubertiade Hohenems and Schwarzenberg. He took part in the BBC Radio 3 Schubert Week with Graham Johnson and has recorded Mendelssohn, Schumann and Schubert discs with Malcolm Martineau.

Opera appearances include La Bohème (Schaunard) with the Munich Radio Orchestra under Ulf Schirmer and Carl Orff’s Die Kluge (König) in Munich, Die Fledermaus (Dr. Falke) in Regensburg, Eötvös’s Tri Sestri (Baron Tusenbach) for the Staatsoper Unter den Linden Berlin, Owen Wingrave (title role) at the Banff Festival, Dido and Aeneas (Aeneas) at Aldeburgh, and a new commission for Bregenz Festival (Das Leben am Rande der Milchstraße by Bernhard Gander).

In concert he has appeared with the Gabrieli Consort and Paul McCreesh, Sir Roger Norrington, the Bach Collegium Stuttgart and Helmuth Rilling, the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin and on multiple occasions with the major BBC orchestras. He made his BBC Proms debut in September 2015 singing Brahms’ Triumphlied with Marion Alsop conducting the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and only a few days later Orff’s Carmina Burana with the BBC Concert Orchestra in the Royal Albert Hall London.

Benjamin Appl was accepted for the BBC New Generation Artists scheme until the end of 2016, as well as becoming an ECHO Rising Stars artist, appearing in recital at the major venues throughout Europe. The Wigmore Hall in London has named him a Wigmore Hall Emerging Artist in 2015.