Capri-Fischer

  1. Martin Jonas
    Martin Jonas
    "Capri-Fischer" (Tango-Serenade)
    Music by Gerhard Winkler, Text by Ralph Maria Siegel, 1943


    This is one of the most successful German schlager tunes. Written in 1943 and recorded by Rudi Schuricke, it was banned from broadcast on its original release as the Allied forces had just taken Capri. When it was re-released after the war, it became a giant hit in the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s, one of the definining tunes of the German Wirtschaftswunder period and the original Italian tourist boom it generated.

    My recording is more uptempo than the original, with a Latin dance rhythm based on an arrangement for clarinets and saxophones by Fritz Schulz, which I found on Musescore:

    https://musescore.com/user/8545006/scores/5408340

    I had previously posted a mandolin sextet recording on the Cafe, along with PDFs of all the parts (link). However, that was a bit too cluttered and I didn't manage to keep all six parts properly aligned.

    For my new recording, I have streamlined this arrangement down to a trio of mandolin, mandocello and tenor guitar, which works much better.

    Mid-Missouri M-0W mandolin
    Vintage Viaten tenor guitar
    Suzuki MC-815 mandocello



    Martin
  2. Frithjof
    Frithjof
    Beautiful performed, Martin.
  3. John Kelly
    John Kelly
    Beautiful tune and playing, Martin. As Frithjof said in the other posting you had today, the new webcam is adding more colour/brightness to the video.
  4. Martin Jonas
    Martin Jonas
    Thanks, John and Frithjof. It's a fascinating piece of German musical history, with its wartime roots and its enormous impact in post-war Germany -- lots of cultural baggage of Schlagermusik, Heimatfilm and Mittelmeer-Romantik in its mixing of Italian and Latin-American musical elements into German popular music. Stripped down to the instrumental core, it's a really lovely melody and fun on mandolin (appropriately enough, given the title).

    German group members will be very familiar with this song. For others, here are some selected recorded versions:

    The 1943 original, sung by Rudi Schuricke: Link

    A very nice (and not entirely serious) 2007 big band version by Max Raabe & Palast-Orchester: Link

    Mixing high culture with (very) low culture: here is Barbara Sukowa singing the song as a nightclub singer/stripper in a key scene from Rainer Werner Fassbinder's film "Lola" (1981) -- note the appearance of both Mario Adorf (as the night club/brothel owner) and Armin Mueller-Stahl (as the respectable civil servant discovering his fiancee's secret life) in the scene. Warning on nudity: Link

    Edit: I never realised that the song was also recorded in English under the title "Bella Bella Marie", by both Gracie Fields and The Andrews Sisters in 1948 (both sounding a bit pedestrian, in my opinion): Andrews Sisters, Gracie Fields

    Martin
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