Berlin Bei Nacht (Berlin By Night)

"Berlin is the most-discussed city in the world today. But why go into that? This album ignores the delicate political situation of Berlin. It is, instead, designed to reflect the distinctive music of the city - music closely identified with the great German metropolis. The Berliner, once called "audacious" by no less than a mortal than Goethe, is noted on the Continent for his ready wit, good heart, sound skepticism and his carefully hidden good humour. The Freedom Bell rings regularly at the new Town Hall in Berlin's Schoneberg, and after dark, in the brilliant, multi-coloured lights of the nervous Kurfustendamm, Tauentizen and Schloss-Strasse - the shopping and business sections of the immense city - the visitor senses something unique - fresh - about the people and places he encounters. Berlin's pop music also is fresh, and entertaining. Horst Kudritzki conducts the singers in this album that was recently recorded, in its entirety, in West Germany. Kudritzki's swinging Berlin Tanzorchester (dance band) is heard along with Paul Kuhn and the Hanse Four, Ilse Hubener, Brigitte Mira, Bruno Fritz, Willi Rose and others in a rousing program of typical Berlin songs, a generous repertoire that might fairly be called a modern West German Hit Parade. The music needs no lengthy notes. Just drop the needle, lightly, on the record. This is Berlin of the 1960s. Nor has it changed much in a hundred years!"