Suave Max Raabe revives band music of old Berlin
> BY TONY MONTAGUE
Over the past three decades Max Raabe and Palast Orchester have become the voice of old Berlin, playing the band music of the German capital in the ’20s and early ’30s—the years of the Weimar Republic. Always impeccably attired in period style, Raabe cuts a poised and elegant figure onstage as he brings new life and new fans to the songs he loves. But he can’t account for his fascination with the music of the deeply troubled but artistically rich interwar era.
“I really don’t have any idea where it comes from,” says the genial Raabe, reached at his Berlin apartment. “But that music was never really gone. Once a week, for instance, there was a radio show in my hometown in Westphalia with a collector who played gramophone records from that time. And when I was growing up in the ’60s and ’70s, every Sunday we had these old black-and-white movies on TV where you would see an orchestra playing in the background, and somebody dancing or singing. Later, in the collection of my parents, I found a 78 recording of a song that was very fast and funny but with a sad note, and that touched me. Then I started buying old records in flea markets. All these musics, these orchestras, and singing groups such as the Comedian Harmonists were important for me in finding my own way.”
Raabe went on to study music at the Berlin University of the Arts with a view to becoming a baritone opera singer. He formed the Palast Orchester there in 1985 with a group of fellow students. “We created the orchestra because we loved the music, but also to help finance our studies. The original arrangements we found were for saxophone, clarinet, oboe, and harp, and for lots of instruments—so any orchestra of any size was able to play them. I found scores in the archives of music stores as well as in the markets. After a while we had 20 to 30 pieces, and started rehearsing. But it wasn’t easy for us. The first year we had hardly any work.”
The Palast Orchester got its first big engagement just in the nick of time. “I was singing with a piano player and we were asked to perform in the lobby at the Berliner Theaterball,” Raabe recalls. “I said ‘Yes, but I have an orchestra as well.’ The guy, who I’m deeply grateful to, didn’t ask how big or small it was but said ‘Okay, come with the orchestra.’ It was not only a big opportunity for us, but our last chance, I think—we would have parted otherwise, because if you want to keep good musicians together you have to be able to pay them.”
On that evening the fresh-faced orchestra with the sophisticated, smoothvoiced singer proved so popular that people started leaving the ballroom for the lobby to hear them. Within a few years Raabe and the 12-piece Palast Orchester were acclaimed throughout their homeland, and afterwards in Europe and around the world. They’ve recorded more than 20 albums, and at the time of the Georgia Straight interview had just begun a three-week engagement at Berlin’s prestigious Admiralspalast, presenting their latest program of music.
“It’s a beautiful old cabaret revue theatre that dates from the ’20s and ’30s,” says Raabe. “My grandmother told me that she was there in the audience watching the shows when she was very young—but she was afraid of telling her parents about it, because the ballet dancers on-stage were only wearing a few bananas, and nothing else.”