In addition to his activities in art song and opera, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau devoted a considerable amount of his time to singing solo parts in oratorios and similar vocal works. This was true from the beginning of his career, when he sang in performances of Brahms' A German Requiem and Bach's Saint Matthew Passion, and recorded the bass parts of many Bach Cantatas for RIAS Berlin. In addition to works of the Baroque and Classical eras (Bach, Buxtehude, Schuetz, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert), he also sang oratorios of the Romantic period, such as Mendelssohn's Elijah and St. Paul, and Schumann's Scenes from Goethe's Faust.

In 20th century music, he sang solo parts in works by Mahler, Schoenberg, Hindemith and Stravinsky, as well as contemporary works by Henze, von Einem, Britten, Tippett and Reimann. Brahms' German Requiem was part of his active repertory from the very beginning of his career (Badenweiler 1947) to the very end (Tokyo 1992), and he continues to be the baritone soloist against whom all others are compared.

Here, as in many other areas of his career, Fischer-Dieskau participated in first performances or first recordings of many new or forgotten works for which he helped to gain the attention of professionals and audiences alike. Benjamin Britten wrote to Fischer-Dieskau to ask him to assume the baritone part in his War Requiem, a work that the singer performed many times during the remainder of his career, under many different conductors. Shortly thereafter, Fischer-Dieskau also sang under the direction of Benjamin Britten in concert performances and a recording of Schumann's Scenes from Goethe's Faust, a long-neglected work. In contrast, Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde had been performed and recorded often before Fischer-Dieskau made his first recording in 1961 under the direction of Paul Kletzki (EMI). In this case, the novelty was having a baritone sing the mezzo solos, a virtually unheard of proposition, even though Mahler expressly specified that the work was for tenor with baritone or mezzo soprano. At the time, the idea of having the solos in Das Lied sung by two male singers was greeted with skepticism, but for many Fischer-Dieskau's interpretation was convincing enough that an exception was made for him, if for no other baritone. Today, however, a young generation of baritones (Thomas Hampson, Roman Trekel, Thomas Quasthoff, Bo Skovhus) are following in Fischer-Dieskau's footsteps, singing in both live and recorded performances of Das Lied von der Erde.

• 'Bach's fusion of the spiritual and the sensual is probably unique in the history of music. Naturally, you have to distinguish among the most various realms of expression. The concerto-like, instrumental Bach requires flexibility and elasticity, the Bach of the great vocal line permits bel-canto sweetness, the narrative-instructing Bach must be sung with the appropriate distance but never with indifference.'
  —Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Interview

• 'But then there was the sound of Ben's music [the War Requiem], in which I was to sing one of the two soldiers. The male solos were contrasted to the liturgy (soprano and chorus). The work seemed to breathe great seriousness and was bursting with new melodic ideas. Various stylistic influences were evident. I heard Auerbach, the photographer who was snapping away during the rehearsals, jeer, "I thought we'd already had Orff's Carmina." And the most fortissimo passages reminded me of William Walton's excesses of this kind. But the work as a whole was imbued with Britten's highly personal expression; it was remarkable how often he managed to engage the emotions and occupy the mind at the same time.'
  —Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Reverberations

• 'While not every aspect of his two recordings [of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde] makes a convincing case for the substitution [of baritone for mezzo soprano] — there are a few phrases, especially in "Der Einsame im Herbst" where the lower tessitura tends to mask important instrumental detail and the vocal line is not picked out in sharp enough relief — much of his singing is a revelation, uncovering elements of all three songs that only one mezzo or contralto (Brigitte Fassbänder on Giulini's otherwise unexceptional performance) comes near to matching. Some may find his approach too knowing, his treatment of words mannered, but he brings the poems to dramatic life in an unprecedented way. No one else in my experience gets the crucial change of mood in "Der Einsame", at the beginning of the third stanza, exactly right: the phrase "Mein Herz ist müde" is inflected with all the monochrome weariness towards which the first half of the song has inevitably been leading; no one else (again apart from Fassbänder) manages to point out the contrast in the central section of "Von der Schönheit" with such clarity and vigour. In "Der Abschied" the climactic high G's may sound a little strained (one can imagine all too easily how a less exceptional baritone would struggle there) but the conception of the movement as a whole is flawless, the sense of a sharply conveyed narrative from "Es wehet kühl" onwards marvelously conveyed.'
  —Andrew Clements, Song on Record, Vol.1

• 'The Brahms Requiem has . . . been a regular feature in Fischer-Dieskau's repertoire, and he has sung the work under all the great conductors. I shall never forget the performance with Bruno Walter at the 1953 Edinburgh Festival, and the reader might remember that he chose this work — along with Bach's Kreuzstabkantate — for his USA début in Cincinnati on 15 April 1955. In 1972 he went on to take part in a much-lauded performance at the Berliner Festwochen on 23 and 24 September (with Gundula Janowitz and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under Herbert von Karajan). After performing the work at the 1978 Edinburgh Festival (under Carlo Maria Giulini) on 25 and 26 August, he included it in his 1980 American tour, singing in Detroit (on 26 April), New York (16 May) and Washington (17 May), under the baton of Antal Dorati. It is clearly one of his favourite works.'
  —Kenneth Whitton, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau: Mastersinger

• 'In 1986, he sang Karl Amadeus Hartmann's Gesangsszene (1963), which he himself had premiered in Frankfurt in 1964. Instead of the "still the same" type of comment, the critic Karl Schumann employed the more elegant "now as before" (Süddeutsche Zeitung 5 Feb 1986):

  Just as then, here is that thundering and whispering interpreter, climbing up into tenorial heights and conjuring these as well as the operatic aspects of this vision of doom. In the great sweeps in the recitatives, hardly ever, or at times, not accompanied, and in the spoken words of the finale ("Es ist ein Ende der Welt! Das traurigste von allen"), he maintains a simply breath-taking tension, and, where Hartmann's passionate music demands it, he offers the extreme in espressivo.'

  —Hans A. Neunzig, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau: A Biography
  

Fischer-Dieskau and Karl Richter	Fischer-Dieskau and Benjamin Britten

WORKS PERFORMED (Selected):

Bach, Cantatas	Faure, Requiem	Mahler, Eighth Symphony	Penderecki, Magnificat
Bach, St. Matthew Passion	Handel, Apollo e Dafne	Martin, Jedermann — Monologe	Rossini, Petite Messe Solennelle
Bach, Christmas Oratorio	Haydn, The Creation	Martin, Golgotha	Schubert, Lazarus
Bach, St. John Passion	Haydn, The Seasons	Mendelssohn, Elijah	Schumann, Scenes from 'Faust'
Bartók, Cantata Profana	Hindemith, Das Unaufhörliche	Mendelssohn, St. Paul	Shostakovich, 14th Symphony
Beethoven, Ninth Symphony	Hindemith, Requiem (Walt Whitman)	Mozart, Requiem	Shostakovich, Michelangelo — Suite
Brahms, A German Requiem	Mahler, Das Lied von der Erde	Orff, Carmina Burana	Zemlinsky, Lyric Symphony

	Fischer-Dieskau and Wolfgang Sawallisch

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Introduction | Opinions and Reactions | Works Performed | Premieres

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PREMIERES (Selected):

Blacher, Drei Psalmen	Henze, Novae de infinito laudes	Reutter, Weihnachtskantilene
Britten, War Requiem	Henze, Das Floss der Medusa	Rihm, Umsungen
Britten, Cantata Misericordium	Matthus, Portrait des Holofernes	Ruzicka, Der die Gesänge zerschlug
Einem, An die Nachgeborenen	Matthus, Nachtlieder	Schwarz-Schilling, Die Botschaft
Einem, Rosa Mystica	Reimann, Wolkenloses Christfest	Stravinksy, Abraham and Isaac
Fortner, The Creation	Reimann, Requiem	Tippett, The Visions of St. Augustine
Hartmann, Gesangsszene	Reimann, Lear — Fragments	Yun, Fifth Symphony

	Fischer-Dieskau and Aribert Reimann

© 2001 Celia A. Sgroi & Monika Wolf