1-CD with 28-page booklet, 25 single titles, playing time 74:21 minutes. 

POLYDOR - a name is legend. Since the 'Golden Twenties', shellacs, later vinyl and compact discs have been spinning under this global brand, initially with different coloured labels, since the beginning of the 1950s with the unmistakable orange label and the little stars or with the Polydor red introduced in 1963.

Symphony of the Stars - 20s

The past sounds dull and far away, as if it were crawling through a wall. When the Polydor record label went to work a good three-quarters of a century ago, music was still mechanically collected by arm-length funnels and pressed onto the heavy, black shellac discs. But already in the middle of the 20's the electro-acoustic recording method is used. Since then the sound has become much better. 

Many things become explosively better, more modern, faster, louder during the "golden 20s". Inflation has stopped with the end of 1923. A kilo of potatoes costs eight pfennigs, a loaf of bread 40 pfennigs - and no longer several billion marks. However, most Germans have been saving up for a "Kommissbrot" for some time now. This is how the vernacular calls the first German small car that Hanomag has offered since 1926 for 2,400 Reichsmark. Anyone who can afford it also has a radio receiver, perhaps even a gramophone at home, about which Max Kuttner raves that it makes such a nice fuss and is even a sensation. At that time, however, a worker earns only 30 marks a week and has to do without such luxury for the time being. 

During these years life in Berlin has been raging like in no other European metropolis. Berlin is big, hectic, sinful, vital, cosmopolitan. The German capital soon outstrips Paris, Vienna and London and becomes the largest film, music, operetta and entertainment centre in Europe. In Berlin, music plays: revue and operetta theatres, cinemas (though still silent), cabarets, theatres and dance cafés attract the amateur and dance-hungry (Charleston and Shimmy) from all over the world in the afternoon, and even more so at night. The cultural life of the city is flourishing. Here in those days the treble clef is used more frequently than the house clef, as the operetta buffo Richard Tauber puts it.

Right in the middle of it, between traffic chaos and neon signs, music and theatre, resides the Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft. The office building is located on Markgrafenstraße, not far from Gendarmenmarkt. Under the umbrella of Polyphon, its owner, the long-established record company is entering the race as its new export brand Polydor. Whether it's pop or dance music, classical or couplet: the Polydor man with the two funnels that adorns the record label brings the new tones abroad. In Germany, however, Deutsche Grammophon's recordings continue to revolve around the fox terrier Nipper, whom the world knows through the pictogram "The voice of his master". 

"Po-ly-dor", these three syllables don't just go smoothly over your lips, they also sound much more international than "Deutsche Grammophon". Polydor is an originally Greek proper name, already documented in the Homers "Iliad", and has the meaning "many gifts".The name is well chosen: it goes just as well with classical recordings as with the many new hits of the time, which capture the zeitgeist with their catchy melodies.In this early phase of German pop music, these hits of the day surpass each other in originality and esprit.The popularisation of records in general and the Polydor brand in particular is closely linked to the growing importance of dance orchestras. Most of these orchestras are named after their conductors, often with the word "jazz" in their names.That sounds good, but it's basically presumptuous.Although since the beginning of the 20's jazz fever has indeed germinated in Europe, the vast majority of formations play music influenced only by American jazz. The audience doesn't care. The band leaders, who keep the dance business running in Berlin's grand hotels and ballrooms, become the prominent masters of ceremonies in social life. Many of them find - at least temporarily - a musical home with the Grammophon/Polydor.