Wunderlich would have been 60 this year. Listening to this disc reminded me anew what we had grievously lost by his early death, at least in terms of beauty of tone and the classical virtues of line and accent. From an interpretative point of view, at 35 Wunderlich still had much to learn. As Alec Robertson averred in his first review of Dichterliebe, Wunderlich's reading wants nuance and interior feeling. We are left with a beautifully voiced rendering, but one that misses the agony and unbearable nostalgia predicated by Heine and Schumann. Michael Stegermann in his note accompanying this issue thinks otherwise finding subtleties that elude me, so admirers of this fine singer may like to sample the issue and make up their own mind. Certainly if you want a straightforward, untroubled account of the work, this one won't fail you. But even if you accept the singer's reading, there can be no two views about Giesen's heavy-handed, obtrusive playing, which never captures the refinements and deeply felt thoughts, not to mention the imaginative flights of Schumann's writing. Listen to Schreier and Sawallisch in this cycle (Philips (CD) 426 237-2PH, 4/90) and you'll hear what's missing here.
In the Beethoven group, calling for fewer specifics of interpretation, Wunderlich and his partner fare rather better but even here they sound stiff and metronomic in, say, Zartliche Liebe and Adelaide. The face, as it were, is blank in expression; all we are left with are the good looks. In the latter song, turn to Bjorling or Schreier and we enter a different world of imagination and of liquescent, caressing of the line.
Some of the Schubert is pleasing, most notably the lighter songs such as Liebhaber in allen Gestalten and Der Einsame, both sung with humour and a nice feeling for the words, though the latter lacks the needed sense of intimacy. That great song Im Abendrot is lamed by the accompanist, but the final three songs—An die Laute, Der Musensohn and An die Musik are the most attractive performances on the CD: here the natural flow of tone with its attractive vibrato and the unsophisticated ease of the singing gives us the Wunderlich we so admired in Mozart and much else.'