He became a tenor, focused on concert and lieder singing, well known internationally for the Evangelist parts in Bach's Christmas Oratorio and Passion.

[3] In June 1945, when Schreier was almost ten years old, and just a few months after the destruction of Dresden, he entered the boarding school of the Dresdner Kreuzchor boys' choir.

[2] His breakthrough came in 1962 as Belmonte in Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail,[1][5] and he also appeared as Tamino in The Magic Flute.

That same year he made his debut at the Bayreuth Festival as the young seaman in Tristan und Isolde with Karl Böhm as conductor.

In 1969, he starred as The Witch in Engelbert Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel, in a CD recording that featured the Staatskapelle Dresden.

[2] He appeared regularly at the Vienna State Opera, where he sang 200 performances, beginning as Tamino in 1967, also as Belmonte, Don Ottavio in Mozart's Don Giovanni, the title role of Idomeneo, Flamand in Capriccio by Richard Strauss, Lenski in Tchaikovsky's Eugen Onegin, Count Almaviva in Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia and Loge in Wagner's Das Rheingold.

[9] He was the Evangelist in Bach's St Matthew Passion in recordings conducted by both Rudolf and Erhard Mauersberger,[9] Karl Richter, Claudio Abbado and Herbert von Karajan.

He ended his singing career on 22 December 2005, combining the functions of Evangelist and conductor in a performance of Bach's Christmas Oratorio in Prague.

[14] Monika Grütters, Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, summarised after his death that he was one of the most impressive voices from Germany ("eine der eindrucksvollsten Stimmen unseres Landes"), who represented Germany in the opera houses of the world as a nation of culture ("für die Kulturnation Deutschland gestanden"), remembered as the Evangelist in Bach's Passions, and having written music history in a career of four decades.