"Our life is occupied with playing, whether we play an instrument or a role."

This from the 1995 Stephan Mösch interview of the famous opera singer Deitrich Fischer-Dieskau around the time of his 70th birthday:

F-D ....In November there will be a concert in honor of the Hindemith anniversary. I have an enormous amount of teaching ahead of me. In addition, I am working on a new book and have been blessed with five exhibitions this year, which in itself means a ton of work.
Q. That sounds as if the amount of work you are doing has scarcely diminished since your retirement from the stage. Do you need the stress ?
F-D Actually, I am doing more than I was before. But I don't regard it as stress, but rather as a game. In fact, the element of play has an important role in my life, and I think that should be the case in the life of every artist. Our life is occupied with playing, whether we play an instrument or a role. And also the construction of a work schedule for each day is a kind of game. A kind of playing with building blocks. Doing this gives me an enormous feeling of enjoyment and pleasure in life.
Q. Can you give an example of this playing with building blocks ?
F-D One has to get through a big pile of mail every day. I don't pass my letters on to a secretary; rather, I try to take care of all of them myself. That takes time. Then there is the studying of scores, then teaching, then work on new books. If you don't bring all of that into an exact plan, and then stick to it in a pretty pedantic way, things get difficult. I don't want to do without any of these activities because they are all important to me. So I have to play this game. How do I get all of that onto a chessboard, so to speak....I have always been interested in all music and have limited myself very little. There is nothing in the entire history of music that is so obscure that it would be of no interest to me whatever. Even in the case of minor composers who imitated others, there are a great many things that are interesting. Whatever I am working on at the moment is my favorite. In any case, that's the way it always was when I sang. Actually, what I have always enjoyed is the challenge that must be met. The harder and more complicated it presents itself, the better.
Q. Does that mean that you are really at your best under severe pressure to perform ?
F-D I don't really know about that. I don't find the execution itself to be so important. And not the end result either. The experience that one gets through the challenges, the personal experience in the face of a musical work that I am not yet familiar with: That is the most important thing for me.