Voice Of The Century[23 CD/2 DVD Combo][Limited Edition]

It is regularly claimed that the young Fischer-Dieskau rose to prominence in post-war Germany with meteoric speed and that he embodied something entirely new at that time. From a purely musical point of view, what set him apart from established lieder singers of his day? It is possible to hear this in recordings by his baritone colleague Heinrich Schlusnus, who took considerable agogic liberties. At cadential phrases, for example, he would take his time, just as he did when dealing with brief, semantically charged note values. When he needed to emphasize something, he would slow down, whereas the actual sound of his voice and intonation remained largely the same. Schlusnus was defined not by his ability to shade each note but by his ability to retain his well-rounded, well-formed timbre. This is not to say that he forced himself upon his listeners. Rather, his performances were based on a narrative approach that tended in the direction of the folk song. While the performer s individuality was maintained by maximizing the sheer beauty of the sounds that he produced, this individuality was secondary to the concept of the song as the musical property of us all. The notes on the printed page seemed binding only in terms of their pitch, whereas the same was far less true of the piece s rhythmic and metric elements.
In Fischer-Dieskau s case, exactly the opposite is true. In those instances where Schlusnus is flexible, Fischer-Dieskau sticks to what is written. But, where Schlusnus adopts a uniform approach, Fischer-Dieskau relies upon thrilling flexibility and fashions the music in a completely different way. This does not mean that an overarching form is imposed on the work, come what may, only that its design and overall structure are more clearly identifiable. Above all, it is the tone colour and phrasing that are varied to a hitherto unprecedented extent within a finely balanced structure governing the tempo relationships. Musically speaking, the singer s use of expression is precisely anchored in the context of the work, while articulation and dynamics replace rubati and portamenti. One could say that the song is laid bare as a sequence of shifting musical ideas. At the same time and in spite of a widespread misconception nuances of colour serve less to bring out the words than to underscore the musical syntax. Also bound up with this point is Fischer-Dieskau s habit of subordinating his voice s inner logic to the musical argument. It was his own form of discipline and a token of his profound respect for the work in hand. In short, he would sing softly when the music demanded it, even where the singer could easily be tempted into breaking out into an arioso style. Top notes were by no means necessarily high points in the vocal line but sometimes merely transitional notes. And he also insisted on rhythmical precision even when slight modifications might have been more immediately effective.
In general terms, Fischer-Dieskau s singing was far more indebted to musical questions than to textual ones. Listeners often failed to appreciate this perhaps because this is far more difficult to hear than is the case with semantically motivated values. And he was able to achieve this because he was vocally more agile and capable of thinking more quickly than his predecessors in the field of lieder interpretation, no matter how magisterial they may have been. The light he shone on these works penetrated each of their parameters. The usual dichotomies of word/tone and voice/piano fail to encompass this fact. It was the texture as a whole to which his singing was geared, the texture, too, that invested his singing with its own compelling logic. Such singing draws every detail of the song to itself and at the same time abandons itself to it without any kind of restraint.
C Opernwelt, July 2012, pp. 28 30