Wunderlich, Fritz: Songs - Historical Recordings 1954-1965

As early as 1949, Emmerich Smola, who was conducting an entertainment orchestra in Kaiserslautern affiliated with Südwestfunk Baden-Baden, had first taken notice of Fritz Wunderlich: the then 19-year-old stood out strikingly from the choir of the Kusel Teachers’ Academy, which was taking part in a radio broadcast about Carl Friedrich Zelter. Four years later, by which time Wunderlich had begun his vocal studies in Freiburg, the long-standing collaboration between the conductor and the singer began; the fruits of this partnership, documented in excerpts on this CD, are now available in record shops for the very first time. Wunderlich remained as loyal to the light music orchestra, with which he made his first major recordings as a student, as he did to the repertoire in demand here, comprising operetta arias, popular songs and a few well-known opera highlights: Until 1965, a year before his tragic early death, he continued to travel to Kaiserslautern from time to time for recordings, even though by then he was fully booked and in constant demand in the major cultural centres. Not drawing a distinction between serious music and (well-crafted) light music was part of Wunderlich’s artistic self-image, and the twenty selected tracks on this CD are the finest proof of the validity of this maxim.

The very early recordings from 1954 and 1955 reveal a quite unique blend of vocal innocence, a few rough edges, and an early mastery of expressiveness and interpretation. Wunderlich elevates popular songs such as “Wenn der Mund schweigt” or “Wolken gehen am Himmel” through the honesty and authenticity of his performance; their immediacy, coupled with the nostalgic flair of the ‘good old days’, is overwhelming. The direction in which Wunderlich’s voice developed over the following decade is impressively demonstrated by ‘Ein Lied geht um die Welt’ and ‘Estrellita’, both produced in 1965: radiant high notes underpinned by a perfectly developed vocal technique.
The opera arias “La donna è mobile” and “È lucevan le stelle” (the latter in German), also recorded in 1965, are masterpieces by an extraordinary singer whose career would have reached great heights had it not come to an abrupt end a year later. Much of what Fritz Wunderlich had begun was left unfinished. However, should even more such treasures emerge from the archives in the near future – his 70th birthday on 26 September 2000 is just around the corner – this would contribute significantly to rounding out the picture of Wunderlich, which has so far, unfortunately, been characterised primarily by repeatedly rehashed medleys drawn from a few popular recordings.