Particularly at around the age of 70 you reach a stage where you have to be very careful. If, at that point, you abandon the work you have been doing, there is a good chance that you will just collapse and drift.

Recording an astonishing array of repertoire (spanning centuries) as musicologist Alan Blyth asserted "No singer in our time or probably any other has managed the range and versatility of repertory achieved by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. His recordings of Winterreise with accompanist Gerald Moore and Jörg Demus are still critically acclaimed half a century after their release.