RIP Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

I just found out about the great baritone's death on Sunday, while catching up on my Google Reader RSS feed; I've been so immersed in following the Cannes Film Festival. I grew up on Fischer-Dieskau's Schubert Lieder recordings, but heard him on LPs in a vast repertoire; he was the most recorded classical singer of any era, after all. If memory serves, I don't believe I was ever lucky enough to hear him in person; he sang live mostly in Europe (never taking the stage at New York's Metropolitan Opera, for example). His fellow singer Elizabeth Schwarzkopf called him "a born god who has it all." My favorite contemporary baritone, Thomas Hampson, has said:

Few artists achieve the level of recognition, admiration and influence of Fischer-Dieskau, and even fewer live to see, that influence realised during their own lifetime. Ushering in the modern recording era, he challenged our perception and processes of how recordings could be made, explored the possibilities of modern recording and exploited the potential for popularity of classical music; and all this while setting standards of artistic achievement, integrity, risk-talking, and the aesthetic ideal that became our new norm. Wherever we bask in the beauty of his tone, revere the probing, questioning power of his intellect, or simply wonder at the astonishing physical abilities through all that he has achieved in his long recording career, we must also pause and say THANK YOU to this great artist, whose legacy, like a great and bright star lighting the way for those who follow in his passion for singing, is exemplary in every way.

The British music critic John Amis wrote:

Providence gives to some singers a beautiful voice, to some musical artistry, to some (let us face it) neither, but to Fischer-Dieskau Providence has given both. The result is a miracle, and that is just about all there is to be said about it.

Here are obituaries at the Guardian, the Telegraph, and the New York Times: 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/may/18/dietrich-fischer-dieskau 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/music-obituaries/9275911/Dietrich-Fischer-Dieskau.html 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/19/arts/music/dietrich-fischer-dieskau-german-baritone-dies-at-86.html?ref=music&gwh=CE48ACB4E2531A8F4198B4EA80D52445 

And here is New Yorker music critic Alex Ross's initial reaction (his links are good, too): 

http://www.therestisnoise.com/2012/05/for-dietrich-fischer-dieskau.html 

Anthony Tommasini pays tribute at the New York Times: 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/19/arts/music/dietrich-fischer-dieskaus-incomparable-voice.html?_r=2&ref=music 

Fischer-Dieskau was every bit as great an opera singer as a Lieder singer, equally good in Mozart, Verdi, Wagner, Richard Strauss - how many could say that? And he was an inspired interpreter of Mahler as well. 

Not least among his legacies is his commitment to modern music. He was one of the three soloists for whom Benjamin Britten's great War Requiem was written (the others being Peter Pears and Galina Vishnevskaya). He was a tremendous Wozzeck in Berg's opera. In fact, he always took on the most challenging parts, such as Busoni's Doktor Faust and Hindemith's Mathis der Maler. Aribert Reimann's opera Lear was written for him, and he sang the lead in the premiere of Hans Werner Henze's sublime Elegy for Young Lovers. No one else was so good in such a varied repertory. 

Here is a Schubert performance by Fischer-Dieskau and his great accompanist Gerald Moore, some 50 years ago: