Max Raabe Palast Orchester

presents MAX RAABE and PALAST ORCHESTER “Fascinating!” “Don’t miss it!” “Max Raabe and his Palast Orchester may be one of the smoothest treasures ever to hit Carnegie Hall.” “Fascinating. A born crooner.” “Most elegant kind of pop music.” “Max Raabe and his 12-piece Palast Orchester are re-creating the music of the Weimar era with verve and class.” A stylish evening of elegant music and sophisticated reverie with MAX RAABE and PALAST ORCHESTER The black-tie big band plays classic renditions of European and American cabaret from the 1920s and 1930s, evoking the heady atmosphere in the nightclubs and theaters of the era. Faultlessly fitting tuxedo, with hair slicked back and a cheeky look, Max Raabe sings the best of the epoch with amusing nostalgia. Songs, hits and couplets. Cuban rumbas, cheerful foxtrots and elegant tangos. Songs of amazingly serious, amusing, yet melancholy simplicity. With sold-out performances in New York, Paris, Berlin and Moscow, Max Raabe and Palast Orchester continues its celebration of timeless music in its upcoming Asia tour in 2012. 34 rue des Apennins, 75017 Paris, France Tel: +336 12 09 06 62 www.avenaart.fr Music review: Max Raabe and the Palast Orchester by Daryl H. Miller February 18, 2010 It's the sound of romance. Horns sing with reeds and strings, seeming to set the very air dancing to the rhythms of waltzes, fox trots and pasodobles. A man, dressed impeccably in tie and tails, steps up to a mike and, in a focused, rounded falsetto, completes the close, perfect harmony. This could be a musical interlude from a 1930-vintage movie, but for a couple of days this week, it is the past as brought back to life by Max Raabe and the Palast Orchester, visiting Southern California at the beginning of a U.S. tour that will take them to Carnegie Hall. Wednesday they were at the Irvine Barclay Theatre; Thursday they drop in at UCLA's Royce Hall. Raabe, in his Rudy Vallee-like voice, and his band have been performing in Berlin for more than two decades, and since 2001 they've traveled here to woo Southern California. Those who haven't caught them live have perhaps encountered them on YouTube, where their gorgeous re-creation of the 1920s and early '30s has been extended to include mock Jazz Age renditions of such present- day hits as "Lady Marmalade" and "Oops ... I Did It Again." "A Night in Berlin," the program that Raabe and the 12 instrumentalists are performing locally, sticks to songs written mostly around 1930 -- songs that speak of love yearned for and found. Or that speak, perhaps, of a gorilla in a villa in the zoo. This last is an example of the sort of German novelty number that Raabe and his compatriots present alongside such better-remembered tunes as "Just a Gigolo," "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" or, a song they perform to absolute perfection: "Cheek to Cheek." Another of the German songs performed Wednesday translates, according to Raabe, as: "Last summer my heart was under great duress when I saw Rosa in her swimming dress." Tall, lean Raabe, with hankie flowering from his breast pocket like a boutonniere, performs this -- as he performs all numbers -- standing stock-still at the mike, his face expressionless. You have to look closely for those rare occasions when an eyebrow arches ever so slightly or his eyes pan slowly from side to side. It's hard to say just how serious he's being. The orchestra members, a bit more rambunctious, cue us in to the fun as, singly and in groups, they pop up from their seats to take the lead on a melody, forming patterns across the bandstand -- or as they conjure hand bells to brightly augment the sound. Singing sometimes in German but often in English, Raabe floats notes -- downy, vibratoless -- in the air. Muted horns are heard from what seems far away, across time. We are in a nightclub somewhere in Weimar-era Berlin, just before things go to heck. We half expect to spot Christopher Isherwood scribbling away in a corner while Sally Bowles hunts the crowd for sugar daddies. The air dances. The world is in love. Musical Days of Berlin (the City...and the Irving) by Anthony Tommasini November 5, 2007 Max Raabe, the wry, unsmiling and nonchalantly charismatic vocalist who headlines the Palast Orchester of Berlin, opened the ambitious 17-day festival Berlin in Lights on Friday night at Carnegie Hall. As is his wont, Mr. Raabe gave running commentary on the songs he and the ensemble were performing. Introducing one number in his world-weary way, he said that music “has always been closely linked to destiny and personal tragedy.” Staring at the audience and hesitating for a beat (his comic timing is flawless), he added, “Who cares?” Then he segued into “Who’s Afraid of the Big, Bad Wolf?” the Frank Churchill song written for the 1933 animated Disney short “The Three Little Pigs.” Mr. Raabe was joined by three good sports from the orchestra, who sang the roles of the pigs. Mr. Raabe’s quip about the deeper meaning of music said much about the aesthetic of the 12-piece Palast Orchester, which is celebrating 20 years of performing German popular and cabaret songs from the Weimar era and American songs of the time that gained popularity in Europe. Mr. Raabe maintains a detached attitude about the matter. In his own way he is a tenderly expressive singer with a light baritone voice, though, like Fred Astaire, he can croon his way to tenorial highs or dip to playfully earthy basso lows. But there is not a trace of sentimentality in his singing, not a slice of ham, even when he is having fun. When Mr. Raabe, backed by the musicians playing the band’s harmonically rich, casually jazzy and inventive arrangements, performs a breezy romantic song like the 1929 “Wenn du von mir fortgehst” by Hans May and Kurt Schwabach, it comes across as affecting and piercingly true. The program provided neither a list of songs nor English translations for the German ones. But after hearing Mr. Raabe’s sardonic spoken summaries of the lyrics, even those with scant knowledge of German must have picked up the textual nuances from his sly performances. Take “Du bist meine Greta Garbo,” by Robert Stolz, with lyrics by Walter Reisch. What is it about? The danger of a man comparing his lady to another lady, Mr. Raabe said. “You are my Greta Garbo,” he explained “You are as blond and as beautiful.” Then he added, after another pregnant pause, “but not as rich.” This was all you needed to know. Mr. Raabe, 44, began his musical life singing in a boys’ choir in the Westphalia region of Germany, and that background affects his artistry today. Rail thin, impeccably tuxedoed, his fair haired slicked back, Mr. Raabe comes across as a wised-up adult choirboy with a slightly seductive glint in his eye. It was fascinating to hear him in “Cheek to Cheek,” the Irving Berlin standard that will forever be associated with Astaire. If Mr. Raabe lacked the dancer’s swing of Astaire’s singing, he brought a slippery legato wistfulness to the song that made you hear it freshly. The Palast musicians, all male except for the solo violinist Cecilia Crisafulli, play with a stylishness, grace and vitality that do not call attention to their impressive virtuosity. Versatile as well, they double up and even triple up on instruments. Rainer Fox, for example, played baritone saxophone, the rarely heard bass saxophone and clarinet, and was a supporting vocalist. Though there were three encores, the final piece on the formal program, “Cosi Cosa,” from the 1935 Marx Brothers film, “A Night at the Opera,” again captured the art of ambiguity that characterizes Mr. Raabe and the Palast Orchester. The lyrics try to explain what the phrase “Cosi Cosa” means. Does it mean yes? Or no? Well, yes and no. From Max Raabe, Vivid Echoes of the Past by Anne Midgette October 16, 2008 A few months ago, asked to name my musical guilty pleasures on a New York radio show, I cited a track by the Comedian Harmonists, the phenomenally successful 1930s-era German vocal sextet. I'm no longer so sure this counts as a guilty pleasure. Like so many genres of popular 20th- century music, this area is increasingly subject to what one might call classical-music-ization: Like classic jazz or old-time Broadway, it's become an object of study, something one might encounter in the academy, something that people feel needs to be learned. The concert I saw Tuesday night at Lisner Auditorium might have been designed to demonstrate this point. Max Raabe and the Palast Orchester, performing a true-to-period program of hits of the 1920s and 1930s (including a couple made famous by the Comedian Harmonists), were the very model of an ongoing venture in historically informed performance. "Historically informed performance" (HIP) is a term generally used for early-music groups. But it certainly applies to Raabe. For the last 20 years, he and the Palast Orchester (the translation "Palace Orchestra" doesn't adequately convey the sense of period and place) have been re-creating not only the music but the very sound of the 1930s. That is: They don't just sing old hits ("Bei mir bist Du Schön," "Cheek to Cheek") in the original arrangements. ("Singin' in the Rain" is offered not in the 1950s movie version but one from the 1920s.) Instead, Raabe (on vocals) and his 12- piece band (brass, violin, banjo, piano, percussion) actually get the hard-edged, metallic sound familiar from recordings of the period.

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