Various - Sinfonie der Sterne Sinfonie der Sterne, 30er Jahre

1-CD with 28-page booklet, 25 tracks, playing time 77:26 minutes.

THE THIRTIES

Grammophone-re-recordings are the highest performances of phono technology! No background noise disturbs the musical enjoyment. The repertoire with its versatility is unique in every field". This is how the DGG 1930 sounds in its advertisements. The offer is indeed rich, the catalogues - separated by Polydor' for foreign countries and 'The voice of his master for his home country - are small printed stately tomes. Divided into quality and price classes in different label colours, operas and operettas, marches, instrumental and dance music, women's, men's and animal voices (e.g. the song of a canary bird), fairy tale, laughter and teaching records appear here as well as there. Only the buyers are missing.

The global economic crisis at the end of 1929 - triggered by the New York stock market crash - spread and dragged everyone down with it. Polyphonwerke AG as well as Deutsche Grammophon and Polydor are also affected. After a record year of 1929 with ten million records, Schall's sales now produced the same amount in the basement as the general unemployment rate rises. Grammophon laid off many employees in Berlin (administration) and Hanover (factory). The company's apparatus engineering almost completely comes to a standstill. The company was no longer able to report profits after 1931. The descent continues unchecked for years to come. In 1937, Telefunken and Deutsche Bank jointly take over the Grammophon, which was financially in ruins.

The mood in the population has also changed. The often wild exuberance and silliness of the earlier years seems to be a thing of the past. The world economic crisis can be felt everywhere in everyday life, right down to the individual families. Companies went bankrupt because crazy markets were breaking up. This is followed by layoffs of employees. At first some are affected - until finally the country is flooded by a mass unemployment never known before. There is no money left in the families for theatre or concert tickets. At most a cheap cinema ticket to escape from everyday life. And as the economy slowly recovers, you have to realize that the taste of the public has also changed in the meantime. It no longer matters who rolls "the cheese to the station" or whether the parrot only eats "hard eggs". People want to hear about love, about nice people in a perfect world.

Fun games, operettas, dance music and of course still the 'cinema on the corner' now set the tone. In addition, with the introduction of the optical sound system, the film has finally learned to speak and even sing. Picture and sound can now advertise for the audience together. And the pianist who once accompanied the silent image with his dramatic or soulful sounds has become superfluous in light theatre. With the triumphant success of the film `Der blaue Engel' (1930) with Marlene Dietrich, around 150 German sound films were shown in the Lichtspiel-häuser as early as 1931. The film industry begins to prosper. And the music plays along.

Whether it's a love story, a thriller or a comedy of mix-ups, active composers deliver catchy melodies and hits on all the film material. DGG thus participates in the success of the film. Soon the film and record industries will no longer be able to do without each other. Almost every successful actor who plays in a film operetta or cinema revue can now become a pop star on the side. From the screen down to the turntable, each actor his own record! The songs of the singing mimes have mostly lost the esprit of the 20's, but still become bestsellers at the DGG at home and abroad.

Despite, or perhaps because of, the economic crisis, dance fever continued to rage during the 1930s. Whether in the Alster Pavilion in Hamburg or in the ferry houses on the Elbe, whether in Munich, Düsseldorf or Cologne, in Breslau, Leipzig or in Berlin's `Moka Efti' or Delphi': a lively Fox will never be left out. People can't get enough of the ensemble sound of professional orchestras. The musicians of these bands sing a unique symphony of the big city, no matter if they bring swing, jazz or daily hits. And the parquet is still safe.

After Hitler took power, however, the dance orchestra scene and the underground music scene, which was influenced by many Jewish authors and artists, thinned out. Under the rule of the swastika, many outstanding bandleaders, but also other gramophone artists, rows of music authors and employees of the DGG decided to emigrate from 1933 onwards to sic:1 before the Nazis. The recordings of Jewish artists can still be delivered abroad on Polydor, while they are already forbidden on the 'voice of his master'. The regime is prepared to make concessions here because the Polydor plates bring much-needed foreign exchange.