Carnegie @ 120

Chiara Quartet and Matmos @ LPR

MATA and VOX 2011

Carnegie @ 120

While most folks were swigging back Coronas and 'Ritas last Thursday for Cinco de Mayo, I was at Carnegie Hall for a celebration of a different sort: the 120th anniversary of the hall's opening on May 5, 1891. (Not sure why it was in the spring, but that's another story.) In that opening concert, Tchiakovsky conducted the NY Symphony, a forerunner of today's NY Philharmonic, in a program that included Beethoven's Leonore Overture No. 3, the NY premiere of Berlioz' Te Deum, and Tchiakovsky's own March Sollenelle. (You can watch a video about that concert, hosted by Carnegie's archivist Gino Francesconi, here.)

Appropriately enough, Carnegie Hall invited the NY Phil back for this concert, along with several special guests. For the occasion, Stern Auditorium was all gussied up like a proud grandma on her birthday, with red and pink flowers and spotlights illuminating the sconces and gold ornamentation: all the better for the TV cameras, who taped the event for a future PBS broadcast.

Adding to the gala atmosphere was a brief pre-concert appearance by Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who said that his old piano teacher would never have believed him if he told her he'd be standing on the stage of Carnegie Hall someday. "That old line about 'Practice, Practice, Practice' simply couldn't make up for my sheer lack of Talent, Talent, Talent," Bloomberg joked, to loud laughter.

The evening started off with a 19th century chestnut: Dvorak's Carnival overture, which, if it evoked the era of Carnegie's founding (Dvorak wrote it in 1892, and conducted it at Carnegie later that year) made for a fairly pedestrian opening. I was starting to worry that this was going to sound like one of the Phil's parks concerts.

But, things picked up considerably with Beethoven's Triple Concerto: a masterpiece that's rarely performed because it takes three high-flying soloists to really make it come alive. Carnegie didn't disappoint, bringing in Manny Ax, Yo-Yo Ma and Gil Shaham for the occasion. Manny and Yo-Yo have been playing together for 30 years, and shared an obvious symbiosis onstage; Gil, though his playing was super, seemed lost in his own world. Of the three soloists, Yo-Yo is the only one who really went for it, digging into his cello with rapturous frenzy. (He was also the only one who played it from memory.) As with his performance of the Schumann concerto that opened Carnegie's season, Yo-Yo does not hold back, certainly not on this stage.

After intermission, a nod to some of the more jazzy moments in Carnegie Hall history, with Broadway star Audra McDonald singing Ellington's "Solitude," "On a Turquoise Cloud," "Sophisticated Lady" and "It Don't Mean a Thing." McDonald was terrific, her big voice and easy warmth easily filling the 2,800 seat hall. Conductor Alan Gilbert looked completely ill-at-ease on the podium, which fortunately didn't interfere with the Phil's snap playing. Still, it made one pine for the 40's and 50's, when Duke and his Orchestra played Carnegie themselves.

The concert finished with Gershwin's An American in Paris, which the NY Symphony (soon-to-become the NY Phil) premiered at Carnegie in 1928. Mixing jazz and blues with the music of Ravel and Milhaud, it's one of the rare pieces of music that is both wildly popular and artistically adventurous. As in 1928, the Phil simply owned it.

Of all the concerts I've seen at Carnegie over the past 20-plus years, this one won't go down as one of the most memorable. In particular, I think of the epic Centennial concert in 1991, which featured the NY Phil with Leontyne Price, Jessye Norman, Marilyn Horne, Plácido Domingo, Samuel Ramey, Isaac Stern, Midori, Pinchas Zukerman, Mstislav Rostropovich, and Alfred Brendel, among others. (I wasn't there, but saw the PBS broadcast.) Not to mention all the regular appearances by the Berlin and Vienna Phils, the BSO's performance of the Berlioz Requiem after 9/11 and their celebration of Elliott Carter's 100th birthday, the amazing new and world music shows in Zankel... My head is spinning just trying to think of it all.