"Who'll put the brakes on Regie-Theater?"
(Abendzeitung, February 19, 2006)

Translated by Celia Sgroi

Gärtnerplatz Theater: Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau as Recitor

His extraordinary career lasted almost a half century: In 1992
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau retired from singing but continued his
activities as a teacher, conductor, recitor and author. (In the
Gartnerplatz Theater on Sunday he speaks melodramas by Arnold
Schoenberg and Viktor Ullmann. This belated celebration of the
singer's 80th birthday is not affected by the strike.)

AZ: Mr. Fischer-Dieskau, what interests you about these very unknown
works?

DFD: I think that "Ode an Napoleon" is one of Schoeberg's most
integrated works. It originated in 1942, during Schoenberg's World War
II exile in America. Schoenberg wrote particularly well when he was
angry. All his resentment against the Nazi dictatorship and Hitler in
particular is concentrated in this work. It is not a typical 12-tone
work, bit rather ends in the key of D-major. Toward the end of his
life the composer returned to tonality. Schoeberg's last words are
said to have been: "Harmony."

AZ: Why did Schoenberg specify a singer as the recitor of Byron's words?

DFD: As is the case with "Pierrot Lunaire," the notes are written
aproximately and the speech rhthym is exact. The recitaion is
accompanied by a piano quartet. At the end of the work there is even a
short sung passage. We are performing the original English version,
because I don't find Schoenberg's German-language version to be
successful.

AZ: Who is Viktor Ullmann?

DFD: He was a Bohemian composer who was murdered in Auschwitz in 1944.
His music sounds like a more harmless version of Alban Berg. Not as
dense but full of ideas and tonal things. "Die Weise von Liebe und Tod
des Cornet Rilke" is Ullmann's last work. It was written in the
Theresienstadt concentration camp.

AZ: Isn't that strange? Rilke's text celebrates heroic death on the
battlefield.

DFD: I don't see it as particularly problematic. The language of the
text is very beautiful. It was the Nazis who twisted the work to be
something warlike.

AZ: How was your long career possible?

DFD: I was reluctant to sing heavy roles like "Wozzeck" or Sachs.
Maybe they were too ambitious, but people wanted to hear me sing them,
so I adjusted to them.

AZ: Were you satisfied with these interpretations?

DFD: Somewhat. We are never really satisfied.

AZ: What are you doing at the moment?

DFD: I'm doing less. I will be conducting a Mozart matinee at the
Salzburg Festival. I have just finished a book about Brahms and am
preparing one about Goethe as intendant at the Weimar Theater. That
occupies my time sufficiently.

AZ: Do you still go to the opera?

DFD: Rarely. I am no longer young, and my ideas about how to
communicate the meaning and purpose of an artwork are different from
those of most directors. Today, people promote themselves and put
their own purposes in the foreground. It was different in our time. We
placed the work ahead of ourselves. I hope it's still possible to turn
things around but the younger members of the audience don't have these
standards.