Wunderlich: Music of the 20th Century [Fritz Wunderlich; Kammerorchester des Saarländischen Rundfunks; Hans Müller-Kray] [Swr Classic: SWR190

Fritz Wunderlich not only delighted the world with beautiful tenor melodies by great masters such as J. S. Bach or Mozart, he also ventured into music that was composed before and after their time. We demonstrate again through this release that this exceptional singer covered a remarkably broad musical spectrum: the three discs acknowledge his commitment to various composers of the 20th century, and cover a variety of musical styles that is unequalled. So, are we to consider the postwar artist Wunderlich, nowadays chiefly known as a Mozart singer, as an interpreter of ‘new music’? His biographer Werner Pfister put it as follows: Describing him as a Mozart tenor is nothing but a label and it almost seems a bit of an unfair one as you could just as well consider Fritz Wunderlich to be the perfect interpreter of 20th-century music. He sang Orff, Stravinsky, Alban Berg, Richard Strauss, Werner Egk, Janáek, Hans Pfitzner and Günter Raphael, and not only enjoyed doing so but sang their compositions frequently. He was the perfect interpreter of modern music on opera stages, at concerts and on the radio. The composers mentioned in the previous paragraph are represented in this 3-CD set, and we added some remarkable recordings of unknown composers like Everett Helm, Dietrich von Bausznern, Heinrich Feischner and Hermann Reutter. Some of the music comes as a first release and is definitely worth hearing. Our admiration for the perfection of this singer in more taxing music is certainly warranted.