Hotel Berlin: Cafe Waltzes (for piano sextet) (1945)

The noted film critic James Agee wrote about the film adaptation of Viki Baum’s novel Hotel Berlin (1945): “The most heavenly routine of Warners’ political melodramas, stuffed with sympathetic veterans.” The plot is just what you would expect from the author of Grand Hotel; various lives intertwine in a Berlin hotel towards the end of World War II.

Director Peter Godfrey, who would request Waxman two years later for The Two Mrs. Carrolls, assembled an ensemble cast that included Raymond Massy, Faye Emerson, Peter Lore, Helmut Dantine, Alan Hale, and Helene Thimig.

The Cafe Waltzes were poignantly restored by Arnold Freed. However, some of the thematic material was also used by Waxman in the Warner film In Our Time (1944). However, recent research has determined that most of this music was first composed by Waxman before he immigrated to the United States in 1934 while he played in the Weintraub Synchopaters band in Berlin.

Waxman’s nostalgic waltzes are recorded by John Mauceri and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra as part of the CD “The Great Waltz” (Philips Classics), and by Richard Mills with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra for “Franz Waxman: Legends of Hollywood, Volume III” (Varese Sarabande).