Fischer-Dieskau
and Me
by Celia Sgroi
State University of New York College at Oswego
A week or so before the arrival of the letter from the
Schubertiade announcing the cancellation of Fischer-Dieskau's appearances, I
got a phone call from Hanne, my elderly acquanitance in Hannover, who had read
of F-D's retirement in the newspaper. She wanted to know if I would be all
right. Yes, I said. Disappointment or no, I have to admit that it seemed like a
silly question to me.
However, as a devoted F-D fan, perhaps my life was now
supposed to end. Perhaps I was meant to cast myself on the flaming funeral pyre
of Fischer-Dieskau's singing career? A colleague in the German department sent
me a copy of an article about F-D's retirement. In the top margin he had
written, "Arme Celia!" Poor Celia? No, it didn't seem that way.
I had been expecting F-D's retirement for at least the last
five years. It really didn't come as a shock, and after the last two concerts I
heard him give, it honestly seemed as if the time had come. The important thing
was that I could now no longer avoid the central question: Was I indeed a
Lieder fan or merely a Fischer-Dieskau fan? By this time, I thought I knew the
answer. I was a Lieder fan, even if Fischer-Dieskau was no longer to be heard.
With all the other singers in the world, surely there were those who would move
me as Fischer-Dieskau had? And if not, could I still not enjoy what was
available?
The 1993 Schubertiade seemed like a good test.I began my
Feldkirch fortnight on June 17th, a kind of Lieder Wimbledon, 16 concerts in a
two-week period. The theme of this Schubertiade was "Schubert und
Goethe." The festival program included concerts by established Lieder
"stars" Brigitte Fassbaender and Peter Schreier, not to mention a
concert by Christa Ludwig after I would be leaving. Then there were the
younger, well-known Lieder singers: Olaf Baer, Andreas Schmidt, Robert Holl,
and Barbara Hendricks. Beyond that were a group of singers who were younger
still: Oliver Widmer, Christiane Oelze, Christoph Pregardien, Boje Skovhus, and
Roman Trekel. And those were just the singers who were giving solo recitals. In
addition, there was a host of young singers participating in duets, trios,
quartets, and two of Schubert's operatic efforts, including Juliane Banse, Ruth
Ziesak, Markus Schäfer,
and Matthias Goerne. It was true: Fischer-Dieskau was nowhere to be seen or
heard, but I was excited and expectant anyway. I will admit that in selecting
my concerts I concentrated on the baritones. I prefer low voices, and I joked
that I was "auditioning" for a successor to Fischer-Dieskau. It was
not entirely a joke, however.
My first concert featured the first baritone of the
fortnight, the Swiss Oliver Widmer, accompanied by Roger Vignoles, whose
program consisted of alternating groups of Goethe songs by Schubert and Vaclav
Jan Tomaschek. Widmer turned out to be a young man in his late twenties with a
light, bright baritone voice and excellent diction. He seemed to be intelligent
and musical, but not very individual and not very exciting. On the other hand,
he was very young and seemed very promising.
That same evening, in the Montforthaus, there was an event
called "Franz Schuberts Privatkonzert," which reproduced the program
of a concert of Schubert's works given in Vienna on March 26, 1828. This
consisted of the first movement of the G major string quartet (D 887), 4 solo
songs for baritone and piano, Grillparzer's "Serenade" for alto,
women's chorus and piano, the piano trio in E-flat major (D 929), "Der
Strom" for tenor, horn, and piano, "Die Allmacht"
(baritone/piano), and "Schlachtlied", sung by a men's chorus. It
proved to be a very entertaining concert. I particularly enjoyed the Cherubini
Quartet, which opened the first half of the concert, and the Trio Fontenay,
which opened the second half. In the first half, the 4 solo songs ("Der
Kreuzzug," "Die Sterne," "Fischerweise," and
"Fragment aus dem Aeschylus") were performed by Roman Trekel and
Graham Johnson. Trekel proved to be another very young-looking baritone. I had
never seen him before, but I quickly realized that I had heard him before-- He
was staying in the room across from me in the hotel and had been warming up
there before the concert. He sang the group of songs well enough that I
instantly made a mental note to buy a ticket to hear his solo recital later
that week.
The next evening, Andras Schiff played Mendelssohn,
Beethoven and Schubert in the Montforthaus. Judging by the applause, it was a
fine concert. I have to admit that I had a difficult time concentrating on it.
This was the evening that Schiff and Fischer-Dieskau had been scheduled to give
a Lieder recital. What a strange feeling to sit there looking at the grand
piano and miss Fischer-Dieskau standing in the bend of it, leaning on the piano
lid as he had done so often in the past. All evening long I was haunted by what
wasn't happening. All the time Schiff played, I kept hearing what wasn't there.
It was a difficult evening, but I hoped that after that, the "ghost"
of Fischer-Dieskau would be exorcized and I would be able to concentrate on the
here and now.
I should say that, although F-D was not physically present
at the Schubertiade that year, he was very much the topic of conversation.
Everyone was talking about the abrupt way he had retired. No prior
announcement, no farewell recital(s)--the exact opposite of what Christa Ludwig
was doing at that very time. Peter Schreier and Brigitte Fassbaender were both
asked on TV whether they had known that F-D was going to retire. They both said
no, but Fassbaender said that when the time came, she intended to end her
career the same way, with no fanfare at all. F-D's absence from the festival
manifested itself in a fair number of empty seats in the concert halls. Financially,
the abrupt retirement seemed to have had an effect on the Schubertiade.
At one of the concerts, I heard a British woman
complaining, not only about the abruptness of F-D's decision to retire but the
arbitrariness of his cancellation of his master class, as well as his Lieder
recital. "He could easily have given the master class," she said.
"He just didn't have the courage to come here and face everyone."
Somehow, I didn't think that F-D was burdened with a need to apologize to us for
having retired, and it was obvious that, had he come to Feldkirch, he would
have spent all his time explaining to people why he had decided to retire. If I
had been in his place, I would have stayed away, too. All during the time the
Cherubini Quartet was at the festival, Manuel Fischer-Dieskau, who was their
cellist, was fielding questions from all and sundry about his father's
retirement: No, he was not ill. Yes, he would be happy to tell his father that
Herr und Frau Soundso sent their regards. The man must have been going crazy.
It certainly would have been worse if F-D himself had been present. Besides, it
soon emerged that F-D's absence from the Schubertiade (and from public
performance in general) was only temporary. At the semi-annual meeting of the
"Verein der Freunde und Foerderer der Schubertiade Feldkirch," the
festival's director, Gerd Nachbauer, announced that Fischer-Dieskau would
appear in 1994, both as reader and conductor. There was general relief among
the "friends and patrons."
Saturdays and Sundays are always festive days at the
Schubertiade. My next concert was in the conservatory church, where it was
already quite warm at 11 AM. The concert started with the Overture for String
Quartet in C minor, played by the Cherubini Quartet, which also, augmented by a
double bass and the organ, accompanied the other numbers on the program,
including two scenes from "Faust" and the Mass No. 2 in G major. The
singers who made the greatest impression on me were soprano Juliane Banse,
Roman Trekel, and another very young singer, this one with a buzz cut and the
coldest blue eyes I have ever seen, Matthias Goerne. In the evening, Alfred
Brendel played 5 Beethoven sonatas in the Monforthaus, including the
"Moonlight" and "Waldstein" sonatas.
My Sunday morning began with the Cherubini Quartet, again
augmented by other musicians, playing Schubert's Octet in F major (D 803) in
the Montforthaus. In those days, the Cherubinis were a bunch of free spirits.
Unlike most string quartets I have heard, they made no particular effort to achieve
the same "sound," and they didn't even dress alike. Four extreme
individualists got together to make music in a very emotional and dramatic
fashion. Their first violinist, Christoph Poppen, is a very showy player, but
at that time he was rivaled by Manuel Fischer-Dieskau as cellist. There were
times when the whole thing sounded like "dueling strings," but they
generated enormous energy and excitement. You can imagine that I was very
curious to see Fischer-Dieskau's son, who, it turns out, doesn't look like his
father at all. At age 29, he was a tall, slender, very youthful-looking man
with a cloud of auburn curls and an angelic face. He looked about 16. On the
stage, however, he was all business, and the entire quartet seemed to radiate
their pleasure in making music and listening and responding to each other.
On Sunday evening, I was in the Konservatoriumssaal to hear
Andreas Schmidt and Rudolf Jansen perform Winterreise. Schmidt had a
beautiful voice, but he seemed intent on proving that Winterreise can
make a powerful impression even when the singer doesn't do much to help it
along. He just didn't sound very emotionally involved, as if he were reacting
to a fender bender accident in a parking lot, rather than losing his love and
wandering about the countryside in despair. The worst thing was, however, that
Schmidt had acquired a whole repertory of Fischer-Dieskau mannerisms and used
them liberally. There were times when he actually looked as if he were giving a
Fischer-Dieskau imitation--the way he sang "Mut," for example, and
the way he stood during the transition from "Die Nebensonnen" to
"Der Leiermann." And in "Im Dorfe," when he sang "Und
morgen frueh ist alles zerflossen," the accent and coloration of
"zerflossen" was so Fischer-Dieskau that I almost laughed out loud. I
got the impression that Schmidt had studied F-D's performance style very
carefully, trying to figure out what had made F-D such an arresting and
dominating recitalist. He certainly had the F-D approach, especially the body
language, down pat. Unfortunately, it was all externally applied and didn't
have the desired effect. Schmidt studied with F-D briefly, but he is the only
F-D pupil I have ever seen do an imitation of the "Meister,"
(onstage, at least).
In contrast, the next evening Peter Schreier and Andras
Schiff gave a Lieder recital in the Montforthaus that was a model of elegant
simplicity. The all-Schubert program consisted of a group of Goethe songs,
followed by a group of Rückert
songs, and closed with another group of Goethe songs. Schreier had only a
fraction of the natural voice of Andreas Schmidt, but his performances were
internally driven in a way Schmidt could not manage (in Winterreise, at
least). One of the most striking things about that concert, however, was the
way Andras Schiff played. Under his fingers, songs I had heard a thousand times
suddenly sounded new and different. Somehow, Schiff managed to reveal and
articulate all the inner voices of the pinao part without ever losing himself
in details. It was a great concert.
The arrival of the BF groupies announced that we were now
into the Fassbaender section of the Schubertiade. Her first appearance was with
a group of younger singers, including Juliane Banse, Christoph Pregardien, and
Olaf Bär,
to sing duets, trios and quartets. Matthias Goerne was ill, so Roman Trekel
substituted for him. The program included the four-part versions of
"Gesang der Geister über
den Wassern" and "Erlkönig," and the Cathedral Scene
from "Faust." The concert ended with the "Kantate für
Irene Kiesewetter," accompanied by Wolfram Rieger and Rudolf Jansen. One
of the best aspects of this particular Schubertiade was the variety of music
performed, and I know I had never before heard any of these pieces performed in
a live recital, so it was educational, as well as enjoyable.
The next young baritone I "auditioned" was Boje
Skovhus, who was making his Schubertiade debut in an all-Schubert program
accompanied by Helmut Deutsch. I found Skovhus to be a real disappointment. His
volume started at loud and got louder, but he seemed unable, or unwilling, to
sing below mezzo forte. The second half of his program consisted of Goethe
songs, and he was better in the more dramatic ones, such as
"Prometheus" and "An Schwager Kronos," but taken as a whole
I did not find him convincing, much less enjoyable to listen to. The audience,
however, thought he was wonderful and gave him great ovations. I found myself
wondering how much of the enthusiasm was for his singing, and how much for his
blond hair, good looks, and Pepsodent smile. The next evening, Olaf Bär
and Geoffrey Parsons performed in a sold-out Montforthaus. As befitted the
festival's theme, most of the program was devoted to Goethe songs. I have to
admit that I am not a devotee of Olaf Bär.
The basic quality of his voice is very beautiful, but I was horrified at what
he went through to produce it. His face got red, his neck seemed to swell--I
thought he was about to have an attack of apoplexy. The audience was
enraptured, and I went away shaking my head. No F-D successor there, that was
for sure.
Actually, for me the "F-D successor" of that
Schubertiade was Brigitte Fassbaender, who gave two solo Lieder recitals. In
the first, she sang the premiere performance of a cycle by Aribert Reimann to
poems by Paul Celan and Schoenberg's "Das Buch der haengenden
Gaerten." The groups of songs alternated with recitations of poems by
Stefan George performed by celebrated actress Marianne Hoppe. The program
certainly stood out in a festival otherwise devoted to Schubert. What struck
me, however, was the intensity and individuality of Fassbaender's singing, in
contrast to the many younger singers I had heard previously. That impression
was confirmed in her Schubert/Loewe recital, accompanied by Wolfram Rieger. All
the songs were to poems by Goethe, and the only overlap between Schubert and
Loewe was "Erlkönig."
The mood of the first half of the concert, which consisted of Schubert's
settings from "Wilhelm Meister," was very dark. The second half began
with Loewe and ended with Schubert, and had a somewhat lighter tone, although
both performances of "Erlkönig"
were intensely dramatic and exciting. Given that the theme of the festival was
"Schubert and Goethe," one got to hear many of the same songs in
different performances. To my ears, only Schreier and Fassbaender had anything
of the intensity and individuality I loved so much in Fischer-Dieskau.
Among the young singers, my favorite proved to be Roman
Trekel, whose recital was accompanied by Irwin Gage. In the first half, Trekel
sang Schubert songs to a variety of poets, including several I associate
particularly with Fischer-Dieskau: "Totengräbers
Heimwehe," "Das Zügenglöcklein,"
"Der Zwerg," and "Der Wanderer an den Mond." The first half
of his program ended with a lovely rendition of "Die Taubenpost."
Trekel was a tall, very slender singer, who, despite his youth, appeared to be
rapidly losing his hair. His voice reminded me very much of the young
Fischer-Dieskau--dark and a bit unwieldy, but with a tendency to be unbalanced
between very bright highs and very dark lows. Over time, F-D learned to exploit
that imbalance thoroughly. Trekel was not yet ready to go that far. However,
his singing was very much "School of Fischer-Dieskau," and he was at
his best in the more extroverted, dramatic songs. His "Der Zwerg" was
really exciting. In the second half, devoted to Goethe songs, his bass notes
came into their own in the Harper songs and "Grenzen der Menschheit."
He also sang a very dramatic and effective "Prometheus." Of all the
young singers I heard, he made the greatest impression, and I looked forward to
hearing him again.
My other two Schubertiade concerts were a two-hand piano
recital by Andras Schiff and Bruno Canino, and an evening devoted to Schubert
as opera composer. This concert featured the existing fragment from Claudine
von Villa Bella (to a text by Goethe, of course) and the one-act Singspiel
"Die Verschworenen," conducted by Peter Screier and with direction
and narration by Brigitte Fassbaender. Neither of these is a great work, but
the singing was good, especially Christiane Oelze, Juliane Banse, and Christoph
Pregardien, and I found it an enjoyable evening. I did hear a lot of grumbling
from concert-goers about having to pay over a thousand Austrian Schillings to
hear works that would have been better served in a school production, but the
point of the Schubertiade is to present all aspects of Schubert's work, and I
saw nothing to complain about.
My auditioning of young baritones continued beyond the
Schubertiade. At the end of July, I heard Thomas Hampson in the opera house in
Munich, accompanied by Geoffrey Parsons. Hampson sang the "original"
Schumann Dichterliebe. I had heard all sorts of raves about Hampson, but
he didn't make anywhere near as positive an impression on me as had Roman
Trekel, for example. I much preferred a duet recital by Felicity Lott and Ann
Murray, performed in the gorgeous Cuvilles Theater and accompanied by Graham
Johnson. Lott and Murray sang duets by Purcell (arranged by Britten), Mendelssohn,
Rossini, Brahms, Gounod, Saint-Saens, and Faure. They brought the house down at
the end of the first half with Rossini's "duetto buffo di due gatti,"
but the whole program was beautifully sung and interpreted, with all the
personality I had missed in many of the younger singers I had heard during the
Schubertiade. While in Munich, I also heard Julia Varady as Violetta in a Traviata
whose staging was annoying and distracting. There were dead leaves on the floor
throughout the entire opera, and in act two Alfredo sang "De' miei
bollenti spiriti" while standing on a swing. Act four began with Violetta
lying on the floor, wrapped in something that looked like a sleeping bag,
teetering on the edge of the orchestra pit. Under these conditions, even Varady
was not her usual self. In compensation, I got to hear Die Meistersinger
again, this time without the warm fuzzy Beckmesser of Hermann Prey.
By the end of 1993, I was congratulating myself on getting
through the first year "After F-D" in fine fashion. And I looked
forward with great anticipation to encountering Fischer-Dieskau in his new
"roles" at the next Schubertiade.
Despite his retirement from singing, it was clear that the
rumors of Fischer-Dieskau's demise had been greatly exaggerated. As promised,
he gave two performances at the 1994 Schubertiade, both of which I attended.
This was a trip which had not started very well for me. I
had planned to make a stop of a week in Feldkirch as part of a month's vacation
in Europe with a friend, which we intended to spend in Switzerland, Austria,
and Germany. Unfortunately, my friend seriously injured her knee less than
three weeks before our departure and was unable to travel, so I scrambled to
put together an abbreviated two-week vacation that included several days in
Switzerland and a little more than a week at the Schubertiade in Feldkirch.
As a result of the abrupt change of plans, a significant
aspect of the Schubertiade was the concert I did not hear: Cecilia
Bartoli and Andras Schiff gave a song recital in a packed Montforthaus the
night before I arrived. It did not seem like an auspicious way to begin, but I
expected other good things to come, and I wasn't disappointed.
The first performance I experienced was a reading from the
letters of Goethe and composer Carl Friedrich Zelter, read by Fischer-Dieskau
and Gert Westphal, "der Kammersaenger und der Koenig der Vorleser,"
as they were described in the press. In the first year of his retirement, F-D
had given a goodly number of readings with Westphal, and this partnership had
continued into 1994. The two readers sat at small desks on the stage of the
Konservatoriumssaal and read a selection from the voluminous correspondence
between Germany's greatest poet and his favorite composer, arranged roughly
chronologically. Gert Westphal was Goethe, and Fischer-Dieskau was Zelter. I
had not tried to read any of this correspondence in advance, so I had no idea
what to expect. What could have been rather dry turned out to be a kind of
extended conversation between the two artists, who described their daily
doings, their projects, their friends, their concert experiences, their
pleasure in their friendship, which was carried on almost exclusively by
letter, and their views on manners and morals. Sometimes the content was amusing,
as when Zelter sent a shipment of turnips to Goethe, who duly reported on the
excellence of said turnips. At other times, the mood was tragic, as when Zelter
reported to Goethe of the death of his son by suicide. Both of them reported
hearing Paganini play with excitement and enthusiasm. Finally, Zelter reported
the death of his dear friend Goethe, which was followed by his own death a
matter of weeks later. At the end, it turned out that more than two hours had
flown by while 500 people sat leaning forward in their seats without making a
sound. It was interesting, funny, and moving, and the two elegant,
white-haired, elderly gentlemen, one tall and one short, enchanted the audience
with their gorgeous voices and their uncanny ability to make you experience an
entire world through the way they delivered words. The applause at the end was
thunderous.
I should say that the audience was a bit distracted at the
beginning. Many of them had been present in 1992 at the famous reading during
which a woman had disrupted the performance by accusing F-D of being a
murderer. For the first ten minutes or so, every little noise had people
starting in their seats, wondering if the crazy lady would be jumping up at any
moment. Soon that was forgotten, and in fact she did not make a reappearance.
However, I am told that Julia Varady, who had not been present when the
disruption occurred in 1992 (she was in London to sing Senta at Covent Garden),
had appointed herself to be her husband's bodyguard and scrutinized would-be
autograph seekers suspiciously after the reading.
The reading took place in the late afternoon, and in the
evening Peter Schreier and Andras Schiff performed Die Schöne
Müllerin
in the Montforthaus. Each time I heard him, Schreier was operating with a voice
that was a bit more threadbare than the time before, but he was still able to
conjure up a convincing miller boy, and Schiff's playing was simply superb.
I was staying at the same hotel as in previous years, but
it had changed hands in the meantime and been transformed from the Hotel
Illpark to the Hotel Rosenberger. The new management had made sweeping changes
in the operation and services of the hotel, including taking on an almost
completely new staff just before the festival began. The new employees
struggled to accommodate the demands of a full house of festival visitors,
generally unsuccessfully. None of the "Stammgäste"
was very impressed with the new arrangements. Among the least impressed, as it
turned out, were Mr. and Mrs. Fischer-Dieskau. It seemed as if every time I
walked into the lobby of the hotel, Julia Varady was parked in front of the
reception desk complaining about something. She was not the only one. Each day
there were new dramas to witness--guests complaining that their rooms were not
being cleaned, guests complaining about room service orders that never arrived,
departing guests complaining about errors in their bills. In my leisure hours,
I often sat in the lobby and enjoyed the spectacle.
I had made last-minute plans to share a room at the
Rosenberger with a woman I had first met in Feldkirch in 1992 and gotten to
know better in the following year. She was a freelance music journalist who had
spent a good deal of time in Europe and seemed to know just about everybody.
She proved to be a very amusing companion. The first thing she did was
introduce me to Andras Schiff, who, when he wasn't practicing or performing,
seemed to be devoting all his time to watching World Cup soccer matches on
television. We chatted about soccer and traded scores for the next week.
One morning, as we were preparing to take a walk, I waited
at the reception desk while my friend did some business. I looked up to see
Julia Varady tiptoeing up behind my friend, raising her finger to her lips to
warn me to stay quiet. She then proceeded to run her car key down my friend's
back, startling her, much to Varady's delight. They were old acquaintances, and
Varady was in the mood to chat. I was introduced as "a friend from
America," and I saw Varady take a deep breath, readying herself to take
the plunge into English. Assured that this was not necessary, she returned to
German with obvious relief and proceeded to share an inordinate amount of her
personal business with us. This included a litany of complaints. The people in
the hotel didn't know what they were doing. There were no flowers in their
suite, they had not received a fruit basket, as they were accustomed to, nobody
seemed to be able to fulfill any of their requests in a competent manner--and
the list went on.
Somewhere along the line, she digressed long enough to
describe how a little girl of about five had presented herself in the green
room after the reading and announced: "Today is my birthday and I want
Fischer-Dieskau's autograph," which she duly received. We told her that
Nikolaus Walter, the photographer who sold Schubertiade photographs, had
captured this on film. Varady immediately wanted to see the photographs. We
agreed to meet again in the lobby to show her the photos, which included a shot
of Varady holding the beaming little girl by the hand while Fischer-Dieskau
signed her program, another shot of my friend getting an autograph from
Fischer-Dieskau, and a third of Fischer-Dieskau alone, which Varady liked very
much.
"You'll want to get them signed, of course," she
said to us. "Come backstage after the orchestra concert and Dieter will
sign them for you." My friend offered to order copies of the photos for
her, and this was arranged. Our meeting came to an end as Julia Varady turned
toward the entrance to the hotel restaurant. "I've got to get some apples
from the salad bar," she informed us, then stopped short and pulled out
the waistband of her slacks. "I've lost weight!" she said
triumphantly, "But," she continued, "my skin is breaking out.
See?" We were given a closeup. "It's stress!" she said, and
prepared to review her complaints, then apparently thought better of it and
disappeared into the restaurant. It was like having a conversation with a
whirlwind.
The weather was unusually hot for late June and everyone
was suffering. The much-touted airconditioning in the Hotel Rosenberger did not
appear to be functioning, and the concert halls were also hot. Neverthless, the
round of concerts took its usual course. I heard fewer concerts than usual, since
my plans had been changed at the last minute. Even so, I heard Oliver Widmer
and Heinz Holliger perform Schumann's Kerner-Lieder Op. 35 and the
Eichendorff Liederkreis Op. 39, and Robert Holl and Rudolf Jansen
performed a program entitled "Schubert im Freundeskreis," which
consisted of Lieder to poems by Schubert's friends and acquaintances, most
notably Mayrhofer and Schober.
One evening, Peter Schreier and Andras Schiff performed Winterreise
in sweltering heat in the Montforthaus. As had been the case the year before, I
marveled at the contrast between Schreier and the younger recitalists. He had a
great deal less natural voice to work with than they, and what he did have was
diminished by age, but he was markedly more capable of creating a mood and holding
an audience's attention. I prefer a somewhat angrier, more bitter Winterreise,
whereas Schreier conveyed a more gentle, resigned grief, but it was a riveting
performance. After the concert, my journalist friend and I went backstage.
Somewhere in her travels she had picked up some little plastic schedules that
listed all the World Cup soccer matches, and she had given one to Andras
Schiff. He had shown it to Schreier, who had admired it. Our mission was to
deliver another one of these little plastic things to Schreier, who was holding
court after his concert. People, mostly ladies, came with their flowers and
gifts and tons of praise. Schreier was gracious,and talked to them, accepted
the flowers and gifts, and signed countless programs. While this was going on,
we stood next to Schiff, who was currently unoccupied. He reported the latest
World Cup scores as if he had never heard of Winterreise. Finally
Schreier was free. My friend explained why she was there and handed him the
little plastic schedule. His face lit up, and for the first time he showed
genuine enthusiasm. "Oh this is great! Thank you!" he said amidst all
the gifts and flowers that surrounded him.
The following evening, Alfred Brendel gave a piano recital,
for which I did not have a ticket. I sat in the hotel lobby, which was much
cooler than my room, and read while my friend attended the concert. The
elevator doors opened and Julia Varady made her way to the reception desk. All
the desk staff made themselves small, preparing for whatever complaint was
forthcoming. Instead, Varady inquired whether my friend was in the hotel. In
obvious relief, they said no and directed her to me, clearly pleased to get her
off their hands. A moment later, Varady was stationed at my elbow, initiating a
conversation that began "I don't want to disturb you, but--" Go ahead
and disturb me, I thought, this will be interesting. It turned out that my
friend had left a message for her that the photos she had ordered had arrived,
and she wanted to pay for them and complete the transaction. I explained that
my friend was at the concert. Well, could she pay me and arrange for the
pictures to be delivered later? Of course. "I'll be back," said she,
and she disappeared into the elevator. The desk staff grinned at me from across
the lobby. This was my problem now.
Julia Varady returned promptly with an envelope full of
Austrian currency but without her glasses. She eventually identified the bills
she wanted, but then we discovered that I couldn't make change. "I'll get
it at the desk," I offered, and the desk staff ducked as one, but Varady
waved it away. "Don't worry about it." The desk staff reappeared
cautiously. I was instructed to put the photos in an envelope and leave them
outside her door. On the sixth floor, she told me: "Dieter's in 601 and
I'm in 603, and there's a sitting room in between." Hmmmm. . . . I have to
admit I was tempted. "Do you have an envelope?" she wanted to know.
"We can get one from the desk." The desk staff disappeared again.
"No problem," said I. "We have an envelope." The heads rose
again. "Well, thank you so much, " Julia Varady concluded. "I'm
sorry to have put you to so much trouble." I assured her that it had been
no trouble at all. "Then good night," she said, offering her hand
with something of an air of dismissing me, and turned back to the elevator. I
shot the desk staff a triumphant glance. My encounter with Frau Kammersänger
Fischer-Dieskau had been a lot more painless than theirs.
After the concert, we duly packed the photos and prepared to
deliver them. Varady had ordered multiple copies of the photo of her husband
she had admired so much, but my friend proposed to substitute a different photo
of him for one of them.
"I wouldn't do that," I said. "She might not
like that one."
"Of course she will. It's a nice photo, and she didn't
see this one." My friend replied.
"You do as you like," said I. "I'm only
telling you that I wouldn't do it."
My friend waved that away as inconsequential and finished
packing up the pictures.
"Are you going to put in her change?" I inquired.
She gave me a dirty look.
We took the envelope upstairs (you didn't think I was going
to miss this, did you?) and found that the rooms in question were dark and
quiet, each with a "do not disturb" sign prominently displayed. I
heroically resisted the urge to knock at F-D's door and wish him goodnight, and
we left the envelope propped against the door of 603. But, of course, the saga
was not yet over.
The next day, Brigitte Fassbaender and Wolfram Rieger
performed Brahms' Die Schöne
Magelone. Fassbaender read the narration as
well as singing the songs. The Konservatoriumssaal was packed with Fassbaender
groupies, with a few of us civilians tucked in around the edges. I had heard
F-D sing this cycle live on two previous occasions and owned the recorded
version with F-D and Sviatoslav Richter, but I had never warmed up to it much.
When this concert was over, I had enjoyed it but was still not converted.
Fassbaender had sung beautifully, however, and if someone had told me at that moment
that this was the last Lieder recital I would ever hear from her, that by this
time next year she would be retired from singing, I simply wouldn't have
believed it.
The last day of the festival began with an orchestra
concert that marked Fischer-Dieskau's conducting debut at the Schubertiade. The
program consisted of Beethoven's piano concerto No. 4 in G major and Schubert's
"Great" C major symphony. The orchestra was the Camerata Academica
Salzburg, and the soloist was Andras Schiff. Rehearsals had been going on for
the past several days, and Andras Schiff's mother, Clara, had expressed
concerns about the piano concerto, since neither the orchestra nor the
conductor had performed it before. It turned out that Fischer-Dieskau conducted
sitting down, and with the grand piano in place before the orchestra, he could
not even be seen by the audience during the concerto. People were not pleased.
However, the performance was fine, and it looked to me as if Schiff was doing
nearly as much conducting as Fischer-Dieskau anyway, so maybe it didn't matter
that the audience couldn't see the conductor.
In the intermission, we talked briefly to Julia Varady,
who, as I had guessed, was not happy about the substitution among her photos. I
looked away because I couldn't trust myself not to laugh. In the second half of
the concert the conductor was again visible, and the orchestra played
beautifully and with great energy and enthusiasm. The audience was pleasantly
surprised at how good the performance was, myself included.
Afterwards, Julia Varady, miffed about the photos or not,
made good on her promise to take us into the presence to get autographs. Unlike
the other artists, F-D did not appear in the backstage area of the Montforthaus
that served as green room. Instead, the elect waited there to be invited
upstairs to his dressing room. I think the order of priority was bigwigs,
friends, and "others." As "others," we waited our turn,
then were shepherded up the narrow stairs to file in and out of the rather
cramped dressing room. This was not a time for an intimate chat, but it was
nice to be able to say hello and get my photo signed (the nice one that Julia
liked, by the way). We lingered for a bit while my friend tried to sort out her
difficulty with Varady, so I continued to observe Herr Kammersaenger as he
completed his autograph-signing duties. Finished at last, he stood up, suddenly
filling the room. Someone asked how he was enjoying his retirement. "Very
much," he replied. "Now I only do what I want to do, not what other
people want me to do." It was said lightly, but he looked as if he meant
it.
That afternoon, I visited the Jewish Museum in Hohenems
with friends. It is a beautiful collection of books, pictures, and ceremonial
objects, but I was a bit disturbed that the citizens of Hohenems take with such
equanimity the constant re-telling of how their Jewish neighbors were
dispossessed of all their goods, taken away, and never returned. The synagogue
was turned into a firehouse, which it remains today. People file in and out,
looking at the exhibits, but no one looks very upset by it all.
In the evening, the festival ended with Edith Mathis,
Brigitte Fassbaender, Peter Schreier, and Andreas Schmidt singing Brahms' Liebeslieder-Walzer
and some other quartets. The pianists were Graham Johnson and Wolfram Rieger.
It was a pleasant way to end my stay at the Schubertiade, and the next day I
left for Zurich and my plane home. The program for the next festival had
already been distributed, and I had ordered my tickets and reserved my hotel
room. In 1995, we would celebrate Fischer-Dieskau's 70th birthday, albeit a
month late, at the Schubertiade Feldkirch.
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