Benjamin Appl, Baritone & James Baillieu, Piano, Chamber Music at the Clark

All Chamber Music at the Clark tickets will be sold by the UCLA Central Ticket Office. Tickets may be purchased online, via telephone, or in person. 

Ticket prices: General $55; Senior (age 55+) $45; UCLA student (valid student ID required for each ticket) $15. Tickets are non-refundable.

Tickets for this concert will go on sale Tuesday, February 17 at 12:00 noon.

Seating at the Clark Library is limited, and tickets are likely to sell out within a few minutes.
Online: https://tinyurl.com/39hu3y3j
Telephone: (310) 825-2101
In person: Central Ticket Office windows located on the UCLA campus at 325 Westwood Plaza (ground level, across from Pauley Pavilion).

If any tickets for this concert remain unsold, they will be available for purchase at the Clark Library on the day of the event. Any available day-of tickets will be sold on a first-come, first-served basis by a Central Ticket Office representative beginning at 1:00 p.m. Payment will be accepted via credit card only. For inquiries, please call or email the Central Ticket Office at (310) 825-2101 or cto@tickets.ucla.edu, Monday–Friday 10:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m.

Program

Franz Schubert (1797–1828)
Winterreise

Benjamin Appl
Baritone Benjamin Appl is celebrated for a voice that “belongs to the last of the old great masters of song” with “an almost infinite range of colours” (Suddeutsche Zeitung), and for performances “delivered with wit, intelligence and sophistication” (Gramophone). A former BBC New Generation Artist (2014–16), Wigmore Hall Emerging Artist, and ECHO Rising Star (2015–16), Benjamin was also awarded Gramophone Award Young Artist of the Year (2016). He signed exclusively to Sony Classical in the same year and has since begun a multi-album deal with Alpha Classics, releasing his first album Winterreise in February 2021 to enormous critical acclaim.

An established recitalist, Appl has performed at Ravinia, Rheingau, Schleswig Holstein, Edinburgh, Heidelberg Frühling, and Oxford International festivals; Schubertiade Schwarzenberg; and at the KlavierFestival Ruhr. He has performed at major concert venues including Grand Théâtre de Genève, Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, Wigmore Hall London, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Konzerthaus Berlin and Vienna, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Musée de Louvre Paris, and at Shanghai Symphony’s Music in the Summer Air Festival.

In equal demand as soloist on the world’s most prestigious stages, his recent collaborators include the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra/Klaus Mäkelä, Munich Philharmonic/Andrew Manze, Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse/Ton Koopman, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra/Andreas Reize, NHK Symphony Orchestra/Paavo Järvi, Philadelphia Orchestra/Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Staatskapelle Dresden/Christian Thielemann, Philharmonia/Maxim Emelyanychev, Seattle Symphony/Thomas Dausgaard, Vienna Symphony/Karina Canellakis, and many others.

Some of Appl’s recent recital debuts include Carnegie Hall, San Francisco Performances, Dallas Opera, Boston Celebrity Series, New York’s Park Avenue Armory (of all three Schubert song cycles), Sydney Opera House, Mozarteum Salzburg, Festival St. Denis, and three presentations of Winterreise by the Gran Teatre del Liceu Barcelona.

Operatic highlights of recent seasons include his role and house debut as Harlequin in Ariadne auf Naxos at Liceu Barcelona; Papageno in Die Zauberflöte at Opéra de Rouen, and his role debut as Guglielmo in Cosí fan tutte with Classical Opera Company (a role which he revisited last season at Mozartfest Würzburg). In the 2024/25 season, Appl looks forward to making his operatic house debut at Hamburg State Opera as Papageno and in concert forges artistic partnerships with Oslo Philharmonic Klaus Mäkelä, NFM Wroclaw, Le Concert Spirituel/Hervé Niquet, and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic (both as baritone soloist and in his European conducting debut)

Appl’s growing discography includes his second album for Alpha Classics entitled Forbidden Fruit, about which BBC Music magazine writes, “The sheer breadth and ingenuity of the programming is, well… irresistible”; an album of orchestrated Schubert lieder with Münchner Rundfunkorchester; a collection of Hans Sommer Orchestral Songs with Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin; an album of Schumann duets with Ann Murray (DBE), accompanied by Malcolm Martineau; and a live recording of Schubert lieder with Graham Johnson for the Wigmore Hall Live label. His first solo album for Sony Classical, Heimat, was Gramophone nominated and won the prestigious Prix Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (Best Lieder Singer) at the 2017–18 Académie du Disque Lyrique Orphées d’Or. Other recent recordings include an album of Bach with Concerto Köln as well as Sibelius’s Kullervo with the BBC Scottish Symphony and Thomas Dausgaard for Hyperion Records.

James Baillieu
Described by The Daily Telegraph as “in a class of his own,” James Baillieu is one of the leading song and chamber music pianists of his generation.  He has given solo and chamber recitals throughout the world and collaborates with a wide range of singers and instrumentalists including Benjamin Appl, Jamie Barton, Ian Bostridge, Allan Clayton, Louise Alder, Tara Erraught, Lise Davidsen, the Elias and Heath Quartets, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Adam Walker, and Pretty Yende.  As a soloist, he has appeared with the Ulster Orchestra, English Chamber Orchestra, and the Wiener Kammersymphonie.

Highlights of the 2025/26 season include tours to the United States, Canada, and Europe, including recitals in New York, London, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Vancouver, Washington D.C, and Barcelona. Further highlights include a Wigmore Hall residency comprising three recitals with different partners, and recitals at La Monnaie and Kölner Philharmonie with Véronique Gens. Supplementary to his performance career, James will participate in the jury of the Tenor Viñas Competition and coach with the Welsh National Opera Associate Artist program.

James is a frequent guest at many of the world’s most distinguished music centers including Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, the Metropolitan Opera House, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Vancouver Playhouse, Berlin Konzerthaus, Vienna Musikverein, the Barbican Centre, Wiener Konzerthaus, Bozar Brussels, Pierre Boulez Saal, Cologne Philharmonie, Wiener Staatsoper, Fundación Juan March, and the Laeiszhalle Hamburg.  Festivals include Aix-en-Provence, Verbier, Schleswig-Holstein, Festpillene i Bergen, Edinburgh, Spitalfields, Aldeburgh, Cheltenham, Bath, City of London, and Brighton Festivals.

An innovative programmer, he has curated many song and chamber music festivals including series for the Brighton Festival, Wigmore Hall, BBC Radio 3, Verbier Festival, Bath International Festival, and Perth Concert Hall.

At the invitation of John Gilhooly, James Baillieu has presented his own series at Wigmore Hall with Adam Walker, Jonathan McGovern, Ailish Tynan, Tara Erraught, Henk Neven, Iestyn Davies, Allan Clayton, and Mark Padmore, amongst others. This series was shortlisted for the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Chamber Music and Song Award for an outstanding contribution to the performance of chamber music and song in the UK.

James was prize winner of the Wigmore Hall Song Competition, Das Lied International Song Competition, the Kathleen Ferrier and Richard Tauber Competitions, and was selected for representation by Young Classical Artists Trust (YCAT) in 2010, and in 2012 received a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship and a Geoffrey Parsons Memorial Trust Award.  In 2016 he was shortlisted for the Royal Philharmonic Society Outstanding Young Artist Award.

Recording projects include Forbidden Fruit (Alpha Classics), Winterreise (Alpha Classics) and Heimat (Sony Classical) with Benjamin Appl, the complete works of CPE Bach for violin and piano with Tamsin Waley-Cohen (Signum Records), and albums on the Chandos, Opus Arte, Champs Hill, Rubicon, and Delphian Record labels as part his critically acclaimed discography.

James Baillieu is a Senior Professor at the Royal Academy of Music, a coach for the Jette Parker Young Artist Program at the Royal Opera House, a course leader for the Samling Foundation, and is head of the Song Program at the Atelier Lyrique of the Verbier Festival Academy. He is International Tutor in Piano Accompaniment at the Royal Northern College of Music and a trustee of the Countess of Munster Musical Trust. Highly sought after for masterclasses worldwide, recent sessions of learning have brought him to the Aldeburgh Festival, Cleveland Institute of Music, Metropolitan Opera Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, Friends of Chamber Music (Portland, Oregon), Vancouver Academy of Music (Canada), and to the University of Waikato, New Zealand.

Chamber Music at the Clark is made possible by The Ahmanson Foundation, under the auspices of Lee Walcott; Henry J. Bruman Endowment for Chamber Music; The Colburn Foundation; Ms. Brenda Anderson; Mrs. Martha R. Bardach; Catherine Glynn Benkaim, Ph.D. and Barbara Timmer; Dr. Rogers Brubaker; Dr. Johanna R. Drucker; Dr. Susan S. Harris and Mr. Mark J. Harris; Ms. Judy L. Hellinger; Dr. David E. Lopez; Drs. Martin and Susan Mach; Mr. Bernie and Ms. Elaine Mendes; Mrs. Janet K. Minami; Mr. Jeffrey L. Nagin and Mrs. Bette I. Nagin; Dr. Theodore M. Porter; Dr. Jeanne Robson; Dr. Thomas Rosenthal and Ms. Susan M. Rosenthal; Ms. Carol E. Sandberg; Charles H. and Carol “Jackie” Schwartz; Dr. Patricia Bates Simun and Mr. Richard V. Simun Memorial Fund; Professor Bronwen Wilson; and Roberta and Robert Young.

Please see here for more information about our chamber music programs.

Photo credits: Appl photo by Lars Borges; Baillieu photo by David Ruano