The great baritone, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau died yesterday in Germany and today's Times has a wonderful appreciation (two in fact). Here's part of the front page story:

Mr. Fischer-Dieskau had sufficient power for the concert hall and for substantial roles in his parallel career as a star of European opera houses. But he was essentially a lyrical, introspective singer whose effect on listeners was not to nail them to their seat backs, but rather to draw them into the very heart of song.The pianist Gerald Moore, who accompanied many great artists of the postwar decades, said Mr. Fischer-Dieskau had a flawless sense of rhythm and one of the most remarkable voices in history honeyed and suavely expressive. Onstage he projected a masculine sensitivity informed by a cultivated upbringing and by dispiriting losses in World War II: the destruction of his family home, the death of his feeble brother in a Nazi institution, induction into the Wehrmacht when he had scarcely begun his voice studies at the Berlin Conservatory.His performances eluded easy description. Where reviewers could get the essence of a Pavarotti appearance in a phrase (the glories of a true Italian tenor!), a Fischer-Dieskau recital was akin to a magic show, with seamless shifts in dynamics and infinite shadings of coloration and character.

Aside from Lieder and opera he was a splendid interpreter of Bach. Here he sings the opening aria from Bach's Cantata #82: "Ich habe genug," based on Simeon's "Nunc Dimittis" in the Gospel according to Saint Luke.May he indeed see the salvation of the Lord!