Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau Monsaingeon films set

Following the death of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Bruno Monsaingeon's boxed set of DFD Materials is being heavily marketed. Don't rush out, though. Most of this material has been issued before, and most fans will already have them in their collections.

The new release is "Fischer-Dieskau : Last Words" . issued in 2013, but based on  extracts from film sessions from 2008/09. Any chance to see Fischer-Dieskau is welcome. It's fascinating to watch his face as he listens to his recording of Schumann's Kerner Lied Stirb, Lieb' und Freud'. You can hear him anticipate the tricky "O Jungfrau rein! Laß mich allein Dein eigen sein!", where the young nun prays to the Virgin Mary. The interviews are edited so they can be followeed in a series of vignettes. DFD discusses his parents, singing in a POW camp, and his early years as a singer. Don't expect revelations. DFD was too experienced an interviewee to give anything away, and Monsaingeon is more worshipful than probing. DFD comments on Furtwángler,but he was too young to have known much about what the conductor did in the Third Reich and Furtwángler wouldn't, in any case, have revealed it to a youthful singer.  The fiilm is also heavily oriented towards DFD's opera career and gives special prominence to Julia Varady, who will, we hope, be with us for many years to come and holds the key to DFD's estate. Since the film is based on what's left of the original archive material, anything special would have been before.

"Fischer-Dieskau : Last Words" runs  50 minutes and on its own isn't worth the price of the 6 DVD set, although devotees like me get a thrill just watching DFD talk. In any case, it's available free on medici.tv (link here). The set includes earlier Monsaingeon films like Autumn Journey made to mark DFD's 70th birthday in 1995. There are concerts, with Hartmut Holl and Christoph Eschenbach, originally issued in 1991 and 1992. They're good enough but don't reflect the singer at the height of his powers. .

Monsaingeon describes the set as "a major Edition which bears my name: the Bruno Monsaingeon edition. It is dedicated to my work with some of the legendary artists of our time.......Fischer-Dieskau and I became acquainted towards the end of the eighties. Over the years, our relationship evolved into a real friendship, if I may say so." As such, the materials are interesting in their own right, but by the 80's DFD was already a great celebrity, as Monsaingeon was well aware. Presentation is slick and there's a booklet., But if you have £155 to spare, you might invest in good recordings.

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau is dead

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau has died, ten days short of his 87th birthday. For me, it's like the death of a parent, for he played such a big role in my life. So I'm not going to write something trite to jump in on the bandwagon. That's insincere. As regular readers know, I don't write unless I can offer something personal or original. Someone like DFD deserves that kind of respect..

And yet, it's hard to find the words to express what he meant. He was a major part of my life since I was 14. Through him I discovered the whole German tradition, starting with song, branching out into orchestral music, literature, poetry, history and painting. Fifty years of adventure, starting with a tinny radio. Without DFD would I have become the person I am?

And more importantly, what did DFD mean to the world? Read the biography by Hans Neunzig (1998) which is the best we've got so far. The real significance of Fischer Dieskau would, I think, emerge all the greater without hagiography. He needs to be appreciated in the context of his times. He wasn't the "only" singer around, by any means, so that context needs to be remembered. But what he did that was special was to bring Lieder values to the fore. Had DFD spent his career in opera, he would not have been the phenomenom he was.  Above all else, he was a concert artist (and by that I include his Bach). On the concert platform, he embodied the Romantic Individual.

The painting by Caspar Friedrich David is such a cliché that we forget what it means. A wanderer is standing on a peak. He's had a struggle to get up there before trails and hiking boots, and he perches dangerously on a rock, looking out into the distance, made mysterious by clouds and fog. The man is a wanderer, who doesn't follow fixed routes or seek final destinations. "Ich komme vom Gebirge her, Es dampft das Tal, es braust das Meer, Ich wandle still, bin wenig froh, Und immer fragt der Seufzer, wo?"  Fischer-Dieskau embodied this Romantic spirit. It's an essentially high minded, intellectual aesthetic, and Fischer-Dieskau's elegant nobility fitted it well.

DFD was the son of an elderly Berlin schoolmaster, and thus a direct connection to the better values of 19th century Prussia - learning, discipline, hard work, idealism.  DFD came of age just after the war, when Europe was in turmoil. It's fashionable these days to attack Walter Legge and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, but they had a vision of Lieder as hyper-refined art that served some kind of esoteric higher function. Fischer-Dieskau and Schwarzkopf became a formidable team. They pioneered uncompromising single composer recitals, selling out the Royal Festival Hall with all-Wolf programmes. Unthinkable now? Together, Fischer-Dieskau and Schwarzkopf promoted other repertoire relatively unknown outside German speaking circles. I discovered Mahler through their seminal Des Knaben Wunderhorn recording (1968). I'll defend that passionately because they sing with great enthusiasm. Fischer-Dieskau also sang in ensembles with most of the leading singers in his day - Brahms parts songs, for example, and of course his Bach series with Karl Richter and others (hear the clip HERE and recognize the voices in "Capella Bavariae". singing Schubert Der Gondelfahrer D809).

Furthermore, in the 1950's and 60's, recordings became mass market. With full length LPs it was at last possible to enjoy long attention span music at home, and to listen repeatedly, unlike live or on radio. Fischer-Dieskau embraced this technology like no-one else. He recorded nearly everything in the repertoire, and preserved as many performances as  feasible on tape. Perhaps they'll be issuing "new" DFD recordings for years to come. Indeed, one of DFD's sons, when asked what his Daddy did for a living, said "He makes LPs". Recordings have changed the way we listen because we're attuned to detailed, analytical listening, perfect for Lieder.

Fischer-Dieskau is a father figure, but you truly honour your father when you grow up properly.  DFD had mannerisms and faults - so what? Who doesn't?  Ultimately, I think Fischer-Dieskau's greatest achievement was to get us listening and thinking about song and appreciating its individuality in the deepest sense. We will truly honour Fischer-Dieskau by understanding song as a living tradition, which grows and proliferates through many interpreters and interpretations. That's DFD's true legacy : love of the art of song, not celebrity..

Schubert Auf der Donau video

BBC Radio 3's "Spirit of Schubert" week was addictive. Something new to listen to again and again. Like the first ever recording of a song about transvestites! It was written for a club Schubert belonged to. Hear it around 1130 on the Saturday night slot.  Wonderful, too, some of the human stories on the request shows, like Alicia de Larrocha trying out someone's new piano in Zambia.  With such good material, why did they have to go spoil everything with Schubert Lab? We don't need to be treated like morons. At least Schubert Salon had Graham Johnson, who always talks sense. "Classical or Romantic?"  Johnson squelches that. Composers don't think of themselves in categories. Schubert learned from the classics and did his own thing. He helped create "Romantic"  I can't be the only person suffering withdrawal symptoms after this marvellous week. Fortunately some of it can still be heard on repeat for several days.

Above, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Svatoslav Richter in the Napoleon Room of Schloss Ismaning in 1978. The full concert is available on DVD. This excerpt is Auf der Donau D553 (1817). Full text and translation HERE on Emily Ezust's Lieder and Song Texts site, a fantastic resource. A couple are floating down the Danube. The piano part describes gentle waves, the steady movement of oars. But this is a poem by Mayrhofer, for whom water was associated with obliteration. Waves don't keep their shape, they don't stay still.  Then the forceful second strophe, where short, sharp questions cut against the flow. The "armoured strongholds" of men are destroyed in war, but nature (the river)  remains. In the undergrowth (dank, tangled) the boat is becalmed, the men afraid. "Wellen drohn wie Zeiten Untergang" (waves threaten to draw them down, like time has destroyed the castles and towers on the river banks) The word "Untergang" repeated with grave menace. Schubert wasn't to know that Mayrhofer would drown himself in a river years later (The Danube, I think). But even then he didn't set the poem as sunny boat ride.

Depths of Der Gondelfahrer - Schubert's soul

Today is Schubert's Birthday, but instead of the usual favourites, I'll write about Der Gondelfahrer because it sheds light on Schubert's values. Ostensibly it's a nocturne, set in exotic Venice. Es tanzen Mond und Sterne, Den flücht'gen Geisterreih'n. But don't be fooled. Already, Geister are afoot.

The poet is Johann Baptist Mayrhofer, a complex man, crippled by morbid thoughts and self hate. A contemporary who knew both Schubert and Mayrhofer described the latter as "always ailing, of sickly complexion, bony but with an abnormal nervous system, totally without elasticity, rigid, icy cold. Also,  in his poetry : elegaic, misanthropic, rancorous, scolding, sarcastic, symbolically-inclined.....his existence and works were a perpetual frenzied struggle of matter and soul, consumed by tragic fluctuation."

Mayrhofer's career was torturous. He trained as priest, became a lawyer but ended up working for the Imperial Censor, which in Metternich's time was the equivalent of a paranoid police state. Since most of Schubert's circle were politically liberal and religiously lax, such work accentuated Mayrhofer's self-critical doubts. Mayrhofer reflects the dark side of Romanticism, with its "Gothic" fixations on gloom and evil. He drowned himself in 1836 but his life seems to have been one long death wish. We don't know why Schubert suddenly dropped Mayrhofer but he can't have been great company, even for Romantics.

So be alert. The poem goes on: Wer wird von Erdensorgen Befangen immer sein! Du kannst in Mondesstrahlen, (who would by earthly agonies be forever trapped? But Du kannst in Mondesstrahlen (you can sparkle in the moonlight) and on the boat alle Schranken los (all restraints gone). But is this an escapist fantasy? Wiegt dich des Meeres Schoss. Vom Markusturme tönte der spruch der Mitternacht (Cradle yourself in the ocean's womb. From St Mark's Tower tolls the sound of midnight). Longing to return to a time before life, ordained by the dark tolling bells which represent Church and State. Since Venice was occupied by Austria, the political undercurrents are obvious.

Sie schlummern friedlich alle, Und nur der Schiffer wacht. Everyone's sleeping peacefully, except the boatman who is on watch. Who is this boatman? Schubert writes lilting, charming bacarolle, to create the image of gentle waves. But why would a gondolier be awake when all the customers lie in bed? This Gondelfahrer's trips cross Lethe not lagoon. He's always alert for the next customer, who might yet be blissfully unaware. Mayrhofer, for all his personal agonies, was an excellent poet, with a surreal vision that's almost 20th century. If only he'd liked himself more, but OTOH he wasn't a self-satisfied prig. Significantly, after Schubert split from Mayrhofer, he was one of the first composers to embrace Heinrich Heine.

So to Schubert's two setting of the poem. The first D808 for high voice and piano plays along with the surface image of Venice and moonlight. Yet no Romantic would fail to twitch at the discrepancy between outward appearances and inner meaning. This is no lullaby, it's a reminder of the presence of Death. As if to emphasize the disconnect, Schubert's second setting, D809 for male quartet, employs a more vigorous jaunty rhythm. Don't take Schubert at face value. Quite possibly the idea of using male voices is to stress the falsity of butch bonhomie. The piano part is sturdy, like a march so fast it can't be sustained too long. The pace is rigid, unrelentless, until the bellrings, when the piano takes on a cruel, metallic tone. No "womb" here. It's midnight, and the ghosts are prowling, dancing in rows, like the moon and stars.  The voices sing decorative rounds, intertwining melodically, but we know from the poem and from the piano, that it's illusion. The Gondelfahrer will get everyone in the end.  The version below is the finest of all because it pits solo pianist (Wolfgang Sawallisch) against a small enough group of singers so their jolly, dance-like interweavings shine brightly. Indeed, the cheerfulness seems almost demented once we know what the song is really about. That's the whole idea. Recognize the voices in Capella Bavariae? Peter Schreier and Fischer Dieskau included. The pianist is Wolfgang Sawallisch.