Carnegie Hall
On May 5th, 1891, one of the world’s great concert halls opened to the public for the first time. Two days later, on May 7th, 1891, one of the world’s leading composers celebrated his 51st birthday. The two events were not unrelated.
Businessman Andrew Carnegie had been persuaded by conductor Walter Damrosh to give $2 million, an enormous sum in 1890, towards a new building for the performance of music. When The Music Hall officially opened on that first night, 134 years ago this week, the batons were in the hands of Walter Damrosch and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikowsky.
Carnegie Hall, on Seventh Avenue and 57th Street in New York City, originally known as The Music Hall, was designed by William Tuthill along with Richard Morris Hunt. While the 34-year-old Tuthill was relatively unknown as an architect, he was an amateur cellist and a singer, which may have led to him getting the commission.
The new Hall was full that night and during the performance Tuthill looked at the crowds on the auditorium’s top tiers and reportedly left the hall to consult his drawings. He was uncertain that the supporting columns would withstand the weight of the crowd in attendance, but, fortunately, the dimensions turned out to be sufficient. One can only imagine what might have happened had they not been.
Tchaikovsky considered the auditorium “unusually impressive and grand” when “illuminated and filled with an audience”.
I have a particular love for Carnegie Hall as I worked for many years with the violinist Isaac Stern who, almost single-handedly, saved the Hall from the wreckers’ ball when in 1960, the building was due to be demolished to be replaced by a 44-story skyscraper. I had a wonderful time producing a television series Tonight at Carnegie Hall and got to work with some of music’s greatest performers.
After massive renovations, The New York Philharmonic reopened the hall on September 27, 1960, with a special opening night concert, conducted by Leonard Bernstein and featuring, of course, violinist Isaac Stern. In recognition of all he did, Carnegie’s main hall, one of three, is named the Stern Auditorium.
Yeah, yeah, I know the old joke, “Excuse me, Sir, how do you get to Carnegie Hall?” “Practice, my boy, practice.” Enough great artists have filled Carnegie Hall over the years since to make that dear old joke a reality. There’s no getting there, at least, no getting to perform there, without years and years of practice.
From Dvořák, Mahler, and Bartók, to George Gershwin, Billie Holiday, Benny Goodman, Judy Garland, and The Beatles, an honour roll of music-making artists representing the finest of every genre has filled Carnegie Hall throughout the years. It is appropriate therefore that the music I’ve chosen here is the Carnegie Hall debut of a young and prodigiously talented conductor Klaus Mäkelä with the Orchestre de Paris. Not Tchaikowsky but Stravinsky.
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