Search - Erich Kunz, German Traditional, Anton Zimmerman :: Erich Kunz Sings German University Songs

A musical Riesling found

Erik Gfesser | Lombard, IL United States | 09/12/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This collection of songs is the perfect remedy for what ails the music lover longing for non-classical German pieces that exhibit no signs of Oktoberfest or World War II. As a German, it can be a bit disconcerting that, outside of works by German composers, with few exceptions the only German music that typically remains on American store shelves consists of modern drinking songs, military marches from one of the most damned periods of world history, and yodeling in the Alps - not unlike searching for German wine (any German wine) in the typical American marketplace awash with wines from Italy and France. This album is the Riesling this reviewer has sought for quite some time. Most of the 21 songs in this collection are from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and while the selections are seemingly forcibly categorized into "taverns and tall tales", "drinking songs", "love songs", "patriotic and satiric songs", and the "merry life" (the exception is the opener, "Beim Fuchsenritt zu singen", to be sung at the fox hunt), these are all traditional songs of the German universities - although in some aspects a multinational character has developed for many of them. The liner notes to this collection provide the perfect description of this genre of music: "the spirit of these songs, taken as a whole, is that of the Germany of the University of Wittenburg of which Shakespeare's Hamlet had such fond memories, and at which Martin Luther taught; of the rousing folk music which Bach used for his Quodlibets and even put into his dance suites; of the centers of learning at which Kant and Hegel taught, and Schiller was the inspired poet; of the student life which Brahms celebrated in his undying Academic Festival Overture". Erich Kunz, who studied at the Vienna Academy of Music and later became a leading singer with the Vienna State Opera, brings an authentic flavor to this very cheerful collection."