What I Learned From the Great Singer Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

One September morning in 2009, I glanced at my watch over and over, nerves fluttering in my chest. I was sitting in the front row of a packed concert hall in Schwarzenberg, Austria, surrounded by other vocal students. At precisely 10:30 a.m., the baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau stepped onto the stage. It was the first day of his master class at the Schubertiade, and it was the moment I would meet the artist who had shaped my musical life.

I was just 12, growing up in Bavaria, Germany, when I first heard Fischer-Dieskau. Leonard Bernstein had called him “the greatest singer of the 20th century,” and few would disagree. When my music teacher played us a recording of his interpretation of Schubert’s “Winterreise,” something stirred within me. This voice was different. Immediate. Truthful. Over the years, I listened to dozens of Fischer-Dieskau’s recordings, studied them, grew with them, and was continually astonished by them.

Now I stood before him. The old video footage of that master class still shows how nervous I was: my vibrato wavering, my breath shallow, my stance unsure. What I did not realize at the time was how open and attentive he was with me. At the end of the course, he offered to work with me privately. For the next three years, I had the privilege of studying with him regularly at his homes in Berlin and Bavaria. Those hours remain among the greatest gifts of my life.

In the months leading up to his centennial on Wednesday, I was granted access to his personal archive: letters, diaries, programs, photo albums. It was a journey to find out more about the man behind the name, affectionately known to his friends as FiDi. And it was an immersive experience that helped me to shape my new album “For Dieter: The Past and the Future.”

This recording features songs that defined his artistic path; songs that shaped the singer who would became one of the most revered vocalists of his time, including works from his family circle; songs by Brahms, Schubert and Wolf; as well as compositions written especially for him by Britten and Barber. Through my access to his archive, I was also able to accompany the album with a book that offers a deeply personal portrait of a multifaceted, fascinating man.