‘Haben sie gehort das Deutsche band?”

So asks Franz Liebkind, the goose-stepping playwright in Mel Brooks’s “The Producers.” As even I could tell you in my pidgin German, this translates to “Have you heard the German band?” Well, meine damen und herren, as of Friday I have listened to the German band, and let me tell you, they are wunderbar.

This weekend, the 12-piece Palast Orchester, under the direction of the singer Max Raabe, opened the 16-night “Berlin in Lights” series at Carnegie Hall with a program of dance and film music from the so-called golden age of songwriting in Germany and America. Mr. Raabe, a 44-year-old native of Lunen, founded the orchestra in 1986 with the intention of recreating the great tradition of German pop music of the pre-war era. In the last two decades, the Palasters have become a Deutschland institution, having recorded more than two dozen albums and played major venues the world over. (The Orchester seems to be considerably better-funded and more popular than any equivalent American ensemble playing vintage pop and jazz, with the possible exception of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.)

Considering what 1930s Berlin eventually became famous for, the music is amazingly ethnically diverse. The Palast Orchester essentially employs the instrumentation of an American dance band circa 1930, with three brass (two trumpets and one trombone), four reeds, a violinist (Cecilia Crisafulli), and four rhythm pieces, in addition to the singing bandleader. Nearly all of the players double on more than one horn, and the guitarist and baritone saxophonist also play violin, giving the group a three-piece string section when needed.

The music itself is made of German elements, such as the more traditional schlager and old-fashioned oomp-pah, and Teutonic beer garden music combined with New York-style hot dance music, including occasional solos and other jazz elements. Here you’ll find cut-time American foxtrots mixed in with waltzes from Vienna and tangos from Argentina. When the band isn’t recalling the sounds of such famous Berlin bands as Marek Weber (The Paul Whiteman of Germany, the Palasters finished with his highly caffeinated treatment of “You’re the Cream in My Coffee”) and the more swing-oriented Teddy Stauffer, it occasionally reforms itself into a vocal quartet to recreate the innovative part-singing of the famous Comedian Harmonists. The hottest number at this weekend’s show was the British song “Over My Shoulder,” played à la Ray Noble with muted trumpets shadowed by baritone sax and a Benny Carter-esque reed chorus.

At one point in the proceedings, Mr. Raabe announced to the crowd that he was not a tenor; either his English isn’t very good, or he was pulling our collective leg, because he isn’t a tenor like Bismarck isn’t a herring. Matching the flawless, high-gloss section work of the band, Mr. Raabe stood bolt upright and delivered all of his lyrics, in both German and English, with impeccable intonation, singing the words and music with pep and personality but without deviating from the melody or the beat. He sang “Singin’ in the Rain” so straight one could practically count the rain drops, and even enunciated a hard “g” rather than the apostrophe at the end of “singin’,” which may be a first. The leader also announced each number in a dry, understated fashion that generally provoked a howl: “Popular song often involves destiny and personal tragedy. But who cares, so long as you’re not involved.” This the band took as a cue to launch into “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf,” an arrangement loosely inspired by a 1934 vocal quartet recording by Der Kardosh-Sanger, “Wer Hat Angst Vor Dem Bosen Wolf.”

On recordings, the Orchester segues easily between European and American pop songs, as well as songs popular on both continents, such as “I Kiss Your Hand Madame,” and, on one of its albums, the original German version of “Schoner Gigolo,” from several decades before it became Louis Prima’s “Just a Gigolo.” It also varies effortlessly between the more syncopated sounds of the mid-’20s and the more streamlined dance music of the late ’30s. In German pop culture, these could be said to represent the more “decadent” music of the Weimar era, notably three tunes by Kurt Weill, including “Alabama Song” (from “Mahogany”) with a clarinet trio, distinct from the squeaky clean, de-ethnicized music of the Nazi era, which was officially (but not really) purged of black and Jewish influences.

The Palasters, commendably, steer clear of politics, but revel in shtick: At the climax of the show, Mr. Raabe announced a waltz, explaining that German waltzes were “not as elegant as those from Vienna, but much louder.” “Dort tanzt Lu-Lu! A-Ha-Ha! U-Hu-Hu!” (aka “Lulu Is Dancing”) strove for deadpan laughs more than for elegance, and included sections in which the band members spelled out the melody by ringing individual bells and laughing in unison. They also essayed the exhibitionistic, reed-twisting novelty “Mein Gorilla Hast Ein Villa In Der Zoo” (you can translate that one yourself).

Alas, the band did not perform any of its retro-style arrangements of more contemporary pop signatures, such as Britney Spears’s “Oops, I Did It Again” and Tom Jones’s “Sex Bomb.” Next time, I hope the Palast Orchester will play highlights from “Der Producers”: I’ve always wanted to hear “Springtime for Hitler” as a foxtrot.

wfriedwald@nysun.com