DIETRICH FISCHER-DIESKAU:DIETRICH FISCHER-Dieskau, the distinguished German baritone, has died aged 86. He sang and recorded more vocal music than any who came before. In particular, he broached more lieder (German songs), his recordings running into the hundreds. Many of these songs he recorded several times over: for instance, he made no fewer than eight recordings of Schubert's Winterreise.
Fischer-Dieskau was born in Berlin and studied there with the veteran lieder artist Georg Walter, then after the second World War with Hermann Weissenborn, who partnered him at the piano in early recitals. Many of his first successes were in opera in Berlin.
He made his stage debut there in 1948, as Posa in Don Carlos at the City Opera, where he went on to be heard in most of the major baritone roles, Italian and German.
From 1949 on, he was appearing regularly at the Vienna State Opera and at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich.
His Covent Garden debut came in 1965 as the impassioned Mandryka in a production of Richard Strauss’s Arabella under Georg Solti.
One of his first and most moving portrayals on disc was as Kurwenal in Wilhelm Furtwangler’s legendary 1952 recording of Tristan und Isolde. Another recording with the German conductor was of Mahler’s Lieder eines Fahrenden Gesellen.
Tall, with expressive features, Fischer-Dieskau was a riveting figure and a not-inconsiderable actor. Nobody who caught him as Mandryka, Mathis or Wolfram will forget the experience.
His enormous repertory included choral works. Besides recording many of Bach’s cantatas, he was a sympathetic Christ in both that composer’s Passions, an imposing Elijah in Mendelssohn and one of the original soloists in Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem.
Britten in 1965 composed his Songs and Proverbs of William Blake for him.
After he had retired from singing in 1992, Fischer-Dieskau took up another career reciting literary texts, often associated with song. He published a book of memoirs, Nachklang, in 1987, translated into English as Echoes of a Lifetime. It showed a man who, for all his many achievements, was uncertain of himself.
He was initially shy, but you always felt that behind the quizzical, sly, humorous eye and manner lay a man of philosophical bent, perhaps amazed himself at what his genius had led him to achieve.
He is survived by his fourth wife, the soprano Julia Varady, whom he married in 1977, and three sons by his first wife, the cellist Irmgard Poppen, who died in 1963.
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone singer: born May 28th, 1925; May 18th, 2012.