Review: Ensemble 10:10 at the Tung Auditorium ****

The Liverpool Phil’s annual artist in residence programme has nurtured a host of rewarding musical partnerships – along with lasting professional and personal friendships – over the past few years.

Among those embraced into the Philharmonic family have been Sheku and Isata Kanneh-Mason, baritone Roddy Williams, the irrepressible trumpet virtuoso Pacho Flores, Sir Bryn Terfel and Wirral’s pre-eminent polymath Sir Stephen Hough.

Baritone Benjamin Appl, no stranger to Liverpool audiences, joins their ranks this season. But if you want to savour his lovely lyrical delivery, you’re going to need to venture out of the Hope Street comfort zone because Messiah conducting duties aside, his spring/summer residency is on a decidedly intimate scale.

Appl and regular collaborator, the pianist James Baillieu, are appearing in a chamber concert up the road at the Tung Auditorium in June.

And ahead of that, he made his first visit to the University of Liverpool’s contemporary space as part of this March programme from Ensemble 10:10 under the baton of Geoffrey Paterson, performing the UK premiere of Jorg Widmann’s Schumannliebe – an orchestral augmentation, or embellishment if you will, of Schmann’s Dichterliebe song cycle for voice and piano (whose chief exponents include Appl’s erstwhile mentor, the late lyrical baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau).

Widmann has orchestrated his piece for a diverse selection of instruments, from strings and winds to harpsichord, accordion, and a wide range of percussion and timpani which created a sweeping visual backdrop to proceedings from bass drum stage right to chimes all the way over on stage left and kept Matthew Brett and Josephine Frieze in seemingly perpetual motion.

Appl, a compelling storyteller who crafts every note and syllable with consummate care, trod a beautifully nuanced path through the 16 songs’ tale of youthful passion in which Schumann/Widmann’s poetic protagonist is plunged into a world of flowers, dreams and fairytales where love’s young dream is shattered by a ‘betrayal’, leaving him a ‘sad, pale man’.

Above: Conductor Geoffrey Paterson and artist in residence Benjamin Appl. Top: Benjamn Appl and Ensemble 10:10. Photos courtesy of Sandra Parr.

Also, quite frankly, a scarily unstable and dangerous man as by the final lieder he’s fantasising about burying the poor woman in a watery grave. Yay, VAWG.

Still, if anyone can make homicidal revenge fantasies sound palatable it’s Appl, who combines an innate expressiveness with a lovely rich and rounded tone.

There were a couple of moments however, certainly around songs six and seven where things take a decidedly darker turn, where he risked being submerged by the ensemble and had to forcibly push his way through the orchestral tumult.

A UK premiere after the interval, and a world premiere to open proceedings courtesy of previous Rushworth Prize winner Nneka Cummins.

Flow State, scored for string quintet, harp, flute and bass clarinet, offers what its composer describes as ‘three distinct sonic soundworlds’ – Ease In, Meandering Wings and the titular Flow State.

Introduced by a jazzy bass clarinet, Ease In did just that with the players creating some interesting percussive rhythms set against the core melody moving pass the parcel-like between flute, clarinet and harp.

Paterson opted to repeat this opening ‘movement’ after the conclusion of the piece – possibly because the evening was being recorded – and the second version of it certainly felt like it had more vividness.

Meandering Wings saw Elizabeth McNulty’s harp and Helen Wilson’s flute buoyed on soft thermals over the strings, delivering the visceral feel of Vaughan Williams’ elegiac pastoral wanderings and of Larkin’s equally elegiac MCMXIV (“never such innocence, never before or since”), while those innocent sunlit uplands also infused Flow State, the octet shifting and shaping to take an even share of its lyrical melodies.

The two premiere pieces bookended a programme which also included Goehr’s Sinfonia ahead of the interval, and Boulez’s brief Memoriale after the break - the latter placing principal flute Cormac Henry centre stage for a deft and well-received solo performance at the heart of an octet of strings and horns.