[3] Recording an array of repertoire (spanning centuries) as musicologist Alan Blyth asserted, "No singer in our time, or probably any other has managed the range and versatility of repertory achieved by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.
Opera, Lieder and oratorio in German, Italian or English came alike to him, yet he brought to each a precision and individuality that bespoke his perceptive insights into the idiom at hand."
When he was drafted into the Wehrmacht during World War II in 1943, tending horses on the Russian Front, Fischer-Dieskau had just completed his secondary school studies and one semester at the Berlin Conservatory.
He served in Grenadier Regiment 146 of the 65th Infantry Division south of Bologna in the winter of 1944–45 and entertained his comrades at soldiers' evenings behind the lines.
[10] In 1947, Fischer-Dieskau returned to Germany, where he launched his professional career as a singer in Badenweiler, singing in Brahms's Ein Deutsches Requiem without any rehearsal.
From early in his career he collaborated with famous lyric sopranos Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Irmgard Seefried, and the recording producer Walter Legge, issuing instantly successful albums of Lieder by Schubert and Hugo Wolf.
In 1951, he made his Salzburg Festival concert debut with Mahler's Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer) under Wilhelm Furtwängler.
Fischer-Dieskau also performed many works of contemporary music, including Benjamin Britten (who chose Fischer-Dieskau as the baritone soloist when writing War Requiem), Samuel Barber, Hans Werner Henze, Karl Amadeus Hartmann (who wrote his Gesangsszene for him), Charles Ives, Ernst Krenek, Witold Lutosławski, Siegfried Matthus, Othmar Schoeck, Winfried Zillig, Gottfried von Einem and Aribert Reimann.
He participated in the 1975 premiere and 1993 recording of Gottfried von Einem's cantata An die Nachgeborenen, written in 1973 as a commission of the UN, both with Julia Hamari and the Wiener Symphoniker conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini.
He retired from the concert hall as of New Year's Day, 1993, at 67, and dedicated himself to conducting, teaching (especially the interpretation of Lieder), painting and writing books.
The precisely articulated accuracy of his performances, in which text and music were presented as equal partners, established standards that endure today.
Perhaps most admired as a singer of Schubert Lieder, Fischer-Dieskau had, according to critic Joachim Kaiser, only one really serious competitor – himself, as over the decades he set new standards, explored new territories and expressed unanticipated feelings and emotions.
Whenever we bask in the beauty of his tone, revere the probing, questioning power of his intellect, or simply wonder at the astonishing physical abilities throughout 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.—Thomas Hampson, May 2012, Hall of Fame, Gramophone Magazine.
Not a single word, not an intention, not a nuance did he pass over in his diction" ("dès qu'il ouvrait la bouche, on y croyait.
[16] In an obituary in The Guardian, pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim, Fischer-Dieskau's longtime accompanist in lieder, called the baritone a "revolutionary performer" because he was the first singer ever to succeed as a single person in delivering equally extraordinary performances in all three genres: opera, oratorio and lieder:"In his interpretations, he [Fischer-Dieskau] created a unity between text and music unlike few before or after him.