Just a few days ago, I was writing about memorable performances I've attended. One of the evenings was a song recital by baritone Dietrich Fischer-Diskau in Chicago sometime in the late 1960's.

The first Mr Woodstock and I didn't have the funds for a TV set when we first got married, and listened to a lot of radio. Chicago had an excellent FM station (still does - WFMT is now part of the NPR network) and when we were going to upgrade from our table top AM radio, we got an FM tuner and a decent pair of speakers instead of a TV.

They played Fischer-Diskau recordings quite often, usually with Gerald Moore at the piano. I had never heard of him, but soon realized what I had been missing.

When we learned of his upcoming appearance in Chicago, we got tickets.

What a marvelous evening! He sang the Schubert song cycle Die Schoene Muellerin, and the audience was deeply appreciative. Those of us sitting in the cheap seats high in the balcony eventually pounded our feet on the floor during the applause at the conclusion. He sang several encores, and seemed as reluctant as we all were to have the evening end.

He died last week, just a few days short of his 87th birthday.

It's hard to sum up how I felt when I heard of his death. I had already recalled that evening, of course, when I wrote for the blog, and had fished out a CD of several Schubert songs, with Moore on the piano, and listened several times. But before drafting the blog entry, I hadn't thought of him in quite a while. He had a rich, long career, of course, but I realized I wasn't ready to let him go. The New York Times published a lengthy obituary, it consumed nearly a whole page, and NPR's Fresh Air aired this. It's worth a listen - the segment is about seven minutes long.

And for more on this remarkable man, go to the Times website and search for his name.