Oct. 6: Musician Inspiring Musicians

By Cathy Fuller

Over the years, I’ve heard many musicians talk about the artists who have inspired them to reach beyond themselves.   It’s often someone who does something else – the Dutch cellist Pieter Wispelwey is never without a recording by Dietrich Fischer Dieskau, and bass-baritone Thomas Quasthoff finds deep and instructive inspiration in many of the pianists of the Golden Age.   

Pianists, in fact, frequently look to singers to try to absorb the qualities that they are required to conjure from the hammers.  Here is Fritz Wunderlich – haunting, luminous and devastating, in Tchaikovsky’s Eugen Onegin.