Max Raabe and his Palast Orchester may be one of the smoothest treasures ever to hit Carnegie Hall.

The sleek German-born bandleader/singer and his ensemble, who appear for a one-night stand Friday, are a musical time capsule, an authentic reproducer of the sophisticated dance and film music that was heard by not only American movie- and cabaretgoers in the 1920s and '30s, but also audiences in Raabe's native Germany, where many of his pop gems were created.

For Germany during that time it had been a rich world of tunes that came to an abrupt end when Adolf Hitler decided the popular sounds were "too Jewish," "too Negroid" and therefore "racially impure." The Third Reich banned their performances on pain of arrest and started dishing out Nazi schmaltz and war-mongering marches in their place. And just to make their point clearer, the Gestapo began rounding up some pop composers and performers and shipped them off to concentration camps.

Nonetheless, the melodies lingered on. And Raabe, a wide-ranging baritone who founded the Palast Orchester in 1985, while studying opera in Berlin, brings back the tap-your-toes dance tunes of Fred Astaire, the melodies of the Andrews Sisters, the romantic ballads of Kurt Weill and Bing Crosby, the seductions of Marlene Dietrich, the rhythms of Benny Goodman - and even the fun tunes of Betty Boop and Germany's own famous a cappella quintet, the Comedy Harmonists. The Palast Orchester presents it all in the original arrangements.

Raabe and his 12-piece band launches Carnegie Hall's 17- day-long "Berlin in Lights," a series of concerts (pop and classical), exhibits and symposiums devoted to the cultural wealth that was Germany's prewar Weimar Republic.

It's not the Palast Orchester's first New York appearance. Two years ago, the band played to a sellout crowd at Carnegie's smaller Zankel Hall.

Raabe's New York repertoire will include a whimsical mix of German, French and Italian period chansons alongside Cuban rumbas, Argentine tangos and British fox trots.

Still, most of the numbers he plans to offer at Carnegie Hall will be made in the U.S.A., such as "You're the Cream in My Coffee." He will also offer English translations of some of his own modern ditties - two of my favorites are, "Clonen" about the potential delights of human cloning, and "Viagra," an ode to medical science's latest contribution to male prowess.

It's far more than nostalgia - it's almost being there. As Raabe puts it: "It's music that pleases, that makes people happy." Between that, and Raabe's own cheeky demeanor, the Palast Orchester epitomizes the elegance of the musical '20s and '30s. As one German critic described it: "excellent manners spiked with a touch of decadence."

-Richard Chesnoff