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80th birthday tribute:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp; </span>Heinz Wunderlich

August 2, 2003
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--David Burton Brown is organist at Idlewild Presbyterian Church, Memphis, Tennessee

How does one mark the birthday of a musician with 80 very productive years? Here is an attempt to outline the 80-year life of Professor Heinz Wunderlich, who will enter the decade of octogenarian on April 15, 1999. Professor Wunderlich is a concert organist extraordinaire, has recorded more than once the entire organ works of Bach and Reger, is known as a composer of organ and choral music, is a superb teacher,  and is loved and honored as husband,  father, and grandfather.

Heinz Wunderlich was born in Leipzig, Germany on April 25, 1919. No stranger to the wonderful musical tradition of Leipzig, which includes such giants as J.S. Bach and Felix Mendelssohn, Wunderlich was lucky to have come from an exceptionally musical family. Both of his parents had musical backgrounds. His great, great grandfather was a musician; one great grandfather and another immediate grandfather were teachers of piano. Wunderlich remembers an aunt in his mother's family who was a professional singer; she also studied extensively in Leipzig. Relatives also include a cousin of his mother who was a conductor in Prague. Following early study at the piano with his own father, Wunderlich was placed in the piano studio of Joachim Voigt, who was the organist in the family parish church. Composition began at age 15. Once accepted as the youngest student ever to the Academy of Music in Leipzig, Heinz Wunderlich studied organ with Karl Straube and composition with Johann Nepomuk David.

An early dismissal from military service due to sickness in 1943 brought Wunderlich to the Moritz Church in Halle, the city of Handel's birth, where he was established as Church Musician until 1958. He also taught at the State Church Music School in Halle. Wunderlich and his first wife Charlotte had three children and seven grandchildren; Charlotte Wunderlich died in 1982. In 1958, Wunderlich and his family escaped to West Germany. He assumed the position as Director of Music at St. Jakobi Church, Hamburg, where he presided over the large Schnitger organ. At the same time, Wunderlich taught at the Staatliche Hochschule in Hamburg. Later he married a second time, to Nelly Sorgei-Wunderlich, a famous violinist from Budapest. Together they have performed extensively in the USA, Russia, Poland, and other eastern lands.

In the United States, Heinz Wunderlich is known primarily as a concert organist. Internationally known in this capacity, Wunderlich makes the seemingly impossible appear to be easy with his facility for performing large scale works with clarity and formal understanding. As a teacher, Wunderlich is patient, yet demanding. Having studied with him myself for a year, two full summers, and several individual lessons, I feel privileged to have been able to learn various organ works at his hand. Always teaching by pedagogical demonstration, rather than merely talking about the music, Wunderlich is careful to assist the student in sensing the formal structures of large works. In so doing, the student develops an intuitive sense of phrasing and articulation and can later dissect by himself large Romantic works of composers like Reger, Reubke, Liszt, and Rheinberger.

Let us then wish Professor Heinz Wunderlich a most joyous HAPPY BIRTHDAY--80 YEARS! It is my hope that the American organ establishment will better acquaint themselves with this marvelous man, who for nearly four decades has played concert tours in the USA, trained a host of students around the world, glorified God and the organ by contributing brilliant new works for his instrument, and given us a better sense of the organ music of his native land!

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