To celebrate Fischer-Dieskau’s 80th birthday, Austrian Television, with the performers’ consent, has issued this film made at the 1991 Schubertiade. It marked the return, after a 20-year break, of the great baritone, aged 66, to Schubert’s first cycle. In re-studying the work, the singer comments that he tried, really for the first time, to sing these songs ‘not so much by feeling as by narrative, not so much concentrating on the vocal line as responding with curiosity and openness to the wealth of colour and expression in the piano part – which calls for a pianist as sensitive as Schiff’.

He is as good as his word, singing the cycle even more off the words than he had in the past, giving his audience a kind of mini-drama, underlined by some movement on the platform and a wealth of facial expression. At this late stage in his career – he retired not long afterwards – his voice inevitably shows some decline in tonal body, but in almost every other respect he retains the famed qualities of his prime: astonishing breath-control, an arresting command of wide-ranging dynamics and total command in putting his ideas into action. The hypnotic reading reaches its proper moment of epiphany in the two penultimate, tragic songs, delivered with all the varied resources the performers can offer them. Taking it on its own terms it is a riveting experience, wholly enhanced by András Schiff’s imaginatively probing playing. As such it will tell younger collectors just why Fischer-Dieskau was so venerated in the field of Lieder.

At the same time, one would not necessarily want an aspiring singer to attempt to copy him. This is an interventionist, big-scale interpretation, sui generis, that inspires the listener because of its interpretative mastery, but the cycle actually predicates a less sophisticated, simpler approach to suggest the sad plight of the desperately vulnerable and forlorn protagonist, one heard on CD in several noted recordings from tenors.

As a bonus there is a 20-minute portrait of the singer, assembled at the 1985 Schubertiade. It includes a couple more valuable examples of his art and a fascinating interview, in which he tells us a lot about himself and his approach to his art, something that will be invaluable in years to come. His answers to questions are always to the point and revealing of his character.