Alpha to Release New Benjamin Appl Album

A little over a month ago, San Francisco Performances concluded its 2022–23 season with a recital by baritone Benjamin Appl accompanied at the piano by James Baillieu. This was a themed program, given the title Nocturne. I had a bit of fun writing about this performance, giving it the title “Benjamin Appl’s Long Night’s Journey into Day.” To be fair, however, I would not accuse the event as being overly long, even with the spoken introductions by both Appl and Baillieu that accounted for the progress of the journey.

from the cover of the Forbidden Fruit album on its Presto Music Web page

This coming Friday Alpha will release an album entitled Forbidden Fruit. Like Nocturne, this amounts to another themed recital, this time based on one of the earliest narratives in the Book of Genesis. The program is structured around 28 songs by eighteen composers. The earliest offering is an anonymous folk song; and the one living composer on the album is Jake Heggie, represented by his song entitled “The Snake.” As is often the case, the album is currently available for pre-order; but the most reliable site is a Presto Music Web page, which accounts for both download and CD offerings.

One can probably guess from the album title that the narrative for this album is that of the Garden of Eden. The folk song that beings the album has, as its first line, “I will give my love an apple;” but those that know their British folk songs will know that this song has nothing to do with temptation, let alone an idealized Eden. So it goes as the cycle progresses, in which the narrated phrases have much more to do with temptation and the resulting Fall from Grace than do the selections sung by Appl. For that matter, the first selection to follow that folk song is the “In Paradisum” antiphon that concludes Gabriel Fauré’s setting of the Requiem Mass (which is performed as a piano solo by Baillieu). However, that first word translates as “into,” rather than simply “in,” since the Mass concludes by the soul entering heavenly Paradise (as opposed to the earthy Paradise from which Adam and Eve are expelled).

All this is a long-winded way of saying that listening to the songs as individual entities is likely to be more satisfying than trying to string them all into a coherent narrative structure. Personally, there are any number of tracks that provide pleasure on their own merits. One of my favorites is Kurt Weill’s “Youkali,” which is more lusciously exotic than any Biblical account of Eden! Also, since I have so few opportunities to listen to the songs composed by Arnold Schoenberg, I was particularly delighted to encounter “Arie aus dem Spiegel von Arcadien,” which was given the title “Langsamer Walzer” in his Brettl-Lieder collection. Finally, there is Hanns Eisler’s vicious account of bureaucracy his setting of  Bertolt Brecht’s poem “Ballade vom Paragraphen 218,” summoning a voice more vicious than anything Eden’s serpent could have mustered.

Both Appl and Baillieu serve up convincing accounts of all of those songs (and, for that matter, all of the songs on the CD); and, as far as I am concerned, their efforts are more important than whether there is an underlying Biblical narrative!