A Millions Strings - Helmut Zacharias and Werner Muller

Monte Carlo Melodie

A Million Strings
Helmut Zacharias And His Magic Violins
Werner Muller And His Orchestra
Decca DL 8382
1956

From the back cover: There may be more imposing and powerful instruments in the orchestra, but none has the persuasive sweep and magic of the violin. None can so move the listener with its silken, sensuous tone, and none can make the heart thrill so deeply with the variations of its romantic appeal.

This album emphasizes the spell of the violin – the cumulative effects of the orchestra of Werner Muller and Helmut Zacharias sound figuratively like a million strings. Both Zacharias and Muller are not only among the most popular of European musician-entertainers but they are also noted exponents of the resources of all the stringed instruments.

Helmut Zacharias has been making music as long as he can remember. His father was a well known violinist who was also his son's teacher. By the time he was six, Helmut was already earning his first pay at the film studios at Neubadelberg, near Berlin, where he performed together with his father. Later he studied at the celebrated Berlin Musikhochschule and won several prizes. He had just entered his teens when he appeared as a soloist with full orchestra and, a few years later, toured Europe as member of a chamber music ensemble.

So far Zacharias had devoted himself strictly to the classics. In 1942, when he was in his early twenties, he fell in love with jazz. He listened to the great exponents of jazz music, applied himself to records, studied jazz literature, jazz arrangements, and the stylistic problems of jazz compositions. He conducted a chorus and orchestra in a monster jazz concert in Hilversum and astonished listeners with his mastery of the jumping bow technique, performing double trills and four-string chords with pyrotechnical virtuosity. Soon he became known as Germany's top jazz violinist and was nicknamed "Europe's hottest fiddler."

Zacharias elected a particularly favorable response in America with his Decca album entitled "Wine, Women, And Waltzes" (DL 9089), in which he rendered some of the great melodie of the recent past which have become standards of the present. This new collection is a worthy successor. Here again the arrangements are arresting, brilliantly interpreted by a large orchestra of unusual color, and Zacharias' solo work is, as always, superb.

Werner Muller, another product of the new musical era in Germany, lives in Berlin. There he has acted not only as the orchestra leader but also musical director of the American-sponsored radio station RIAS. Besides being a conductor he is a well-known arranger, one who is a perfectionist regarding the sound produced by the instrumentalists. In the United States his skill is already recognized for the arrangement and recording of "Malagueña" with Caterina Valente, and also for many of the brilliant Long Play records in Decca's celebrated Holiday Series.

Two of Muller's numbers in this album have an interesting history. The song "Bistro" was written by two Belgains, a lilting waltz in which Werner alternates the French sound of the Musette with lush strings. "Monte Carlo Melodie" was written by an American, Al Frishc. Muller gave it its first recording, and it is now sweeping the country.

From Billboard - November 17, 1956: Violinist Zacharias fared well sales-wise with his recent single waxing of "White Lilacs," and his latest LP – a worthy successor to his "Wine Woman and Waltzes" package – should also spark a healthy return. Zacharias and his Magic Violin are lushly effective on six romantic selections, while Werner Muller's ork reflects an equally lyrical sweet-string mood on six other Continental instrumentals. Fine for deejays.

Caminito
I Want To Be Happy
When The White Lilacs Bloom Again
Bistro
Lisbon Antiqua
Blue Blues
Monte Carlo Melodie
Spanish Violins
The Song From Desiree
Arpanetta
The Elephant Tango