I doubt this two disc set is available any longer, but it offers some interesting live performances and unusual repertoire spanning twelve years of Wunderlich’s career, the earliest performance being from 1954, when he would have been just 23 and the last from his final concert in Edinburgh in 1966, recorded shortly before the accident which claimed his life. The insert is missing in my copy and the track listing on the back isn’t quite accurate, for instance it credits Hilde Güden as the Violetta in the excerpts from the 1965 Munich La Traviata under Patané, when the role was actually taken by Teresa Stratas. (I have the complete performance on the Orfeo label.)

Disc 1 starts off with Handel. First we have a couple of excerpts from a 1959 performance of Messiah in German. Comfort ye is nicely done, but a tendency to aspirate his runs is notable in the ensuing Every valley. He must have been aware of this fault, because by the time he sings in Judas Maccabeus, conducted by Rafael Kubelik in 1963, that tendency has virtually vanished. Although this is also sung in German, he is now a much more confident singer and his rendition of Sound an alarm is absolutely stunning. Next we have a couple of excerpts from a 1965 radio performance of Iphigénie en Tauride (also in German) again under Kubelik, with brief contributions from Hermann Prey and Sena Jurinac. More and more of the assured artist is emerging.

Next comes Mozart, and we again go back in time, first to some delightful excerpts from Zaïde from 1956, followed by a performance of the short concert aria Con ossequio, con rispetto. The listing gives no indication of the date, but a little digging reveals that it was probably from 1963 and, again, the mature artist is beginning to emerge. This is followed by six extracts from a 1959 performance of Schubert’s Fierrabras. The other soloists were unknown to me. They are all competent enough but Wunderlich’s superior voice and musicianship are immediately apparent. The disc finishes with three songs from his final concert in Edinburgh in 1966, to which I will return at the end of this review.

Another rarity begins the second disc; Cherubini’s comic opera Les deux journées, sung in German and given the title Der Wasserträger. Wunderlich sings two duets with Hildegard Hillebrecht. The music reminds me rather of Weber’s Abu Hassan, charming and lightweight and Wunderlich is perfectly attuned to its style. Next he makes a perfect Alfredo in the 1965 performance of La Traviata, mentioned above. All Wunderlich’s recordings of Italian opera excerpts were in German and it is amazing how he can still make the music sound italilanate even in the wrong language. Here in the right language, his legato is superb and he is the ardent young Alfredo to the life. He is not quite so impressive in a 1960 performance of Verdi’s Requiem. He tends to slightly oversing, maybe in what he thought was the Italianate method. There is the merest hint of a sob and the occasional aspirate, but I do wonder what he might have made of the part had he been engaged for the 1964 Giulini recording with Schwarzkopf. With Legge and Giulini to guide him, he might just have been the perfect tenor for that enterprise, however good Gedda is in it.

A 1959 exceprt from Strauss’s Die schweigsame Frau would surely have reconciled Strauss to the tenor voice. Strauss’s tenor writing can sound quite torturous, but Wunderlich sings with great beauty, soaring over the orchestra. Unexpected items follow with an exceprt from The Cunning Little Vixen (in German), one from Pfitzner’s Von Deutscher Seele and a short extract from Franz Schmidt’s Das Buch mit Sieben Sieglen, conducted by Dimitri Mitropoulos in 1959, both pieces completely new to me.

The final item is a 1954 recording of hin singing an aria from Robert Stolz’s Venus in Seide. Wunderlich would have been just 23 and, though a little diffident, the golden voice is imediately recognisable. It is instructive, then, to return to the final items on the first disc, the last recordings we have of Wunderlich’s voice, made at a concert in Edinburgh shortly before his untimely death. Before a live audience, he sings Schumann’s Die Lotusblume and Schubert’s Ungeduld with greater senisitivity and freedom than he does on his DG Studio recitals, recorded the previous year, and when it comes to his final encore, Schubert’s An die Musik, he delivers a beautiful, heartfelt rendering, vastly superior to the rather stiff one we hear in the studio. Nobody knew it at the time of course, but this touching tribute to music was the last song he ever sang in public. Two weeks later he tripped on loosely tied shoelaces and fell down the stone staircase at a friend’s hunting lodge in Oberderdingen. He had been due to make his Metropolitan Opera debut in Don Giovanni a few weeks later.

Wunderlich left behind a vast catalogue of studio recordings, of operetta, of opera and of Lieder. He was obviously still developing as an artist. How sad to think that he was only really beginning his international career.