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The Heckler

The Heckler: my decades-long campaign against Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

Michael Tanner says the ubiquitous German baritone turned brief songs into ‘meaningful’ slogs

13 June 2015

9:00 AM

13 June 2015

9:00 AM

For anyone who has been interested in classical vocal music since the middle of the last century, whether choral, operatic or solo, there has been one inescapable name and voice: Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. His repertoire was gigantic, surely larger than that of any singer ever. He began public concerts and recordings in the late 1940s and only gave up in the 1990s, when he took to conducting and narrating, as well as painting, writing a large number of books about German composers (including a ridiculous one on Wagner and Nietzsche) and of course coaching young singers.

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