“What breathtaking pleasure it is to see the world coming apart at the seams!” At the beginning of the 1920s, this prospect was both terrifying and enticing for the “child of the time” Klaus Mann. No sooner had the First World War survived as a “colossal orgy of hatred and destruction” than the crisis of hyperinflation caused people of all classes to slide into existential hardship. Turmoil, upheaval and growing social contrasts, but also an escape into pleasure, intoxication and all kinds of border-crossing characterized everyday life and the arts in the 1920s. And were reflected in the music of the era, for which people flocked to operettas, variety shows, revues, dance halls and jazz clubs.

Concert designer Iñigo Giner Miranda emerges from the depths of time in as the evening's master of ceremony and, together with cellist Eckart Runge and pianist Jacques Ammon, transforms the Kleine Saal into a dazzling place where this creative, intoxicating decade comes to life in pieces by Bloch, Weill, Hindemith, Korngold and film music from ‘Babylon Berlin’ arranged by Runge and Ammon. Recordings of old radio recordings, projections of film footage and shadow theatre with the help of contemporary projectors are all involved in creating a fascinating world that illuminates not only Berlin but also Paris in the 1920s.