Portrait of Carnegie Hall

Résumé du livre

For more than seven decades, Carnegie Hall has been the nation's leading showcase for the performing arts. From the old-world classicism of Theodore Thomas in the 1870s to the new-world romanticism of Leonard Bernstein, it has presented the leading performers in every field: musicians from symphony composers to Dixieland bands, poets from Yeats to Ogden Nash, pianists from Paderewski to Fats Waller, singers from Galli-Curci to Billie Holiday - the roster is an encyclopedia of "greats." In addition to musical performances there have been hundreds of lectures, rallies, religious services, dance programs, art exhibitions. Its varied repertoire mirrors the cultural history of its times. Among its "firsts" have been the world premiere of An American in Paris, Yehudi Menuhin's appearance at the age of eleven, and the jazz concert of 1912, which was the first time many white people had ever heard Negro music. The authors' text is informal, informed, anecdotal and delightful, highlighted by vignettes of many of the artists, and within 385 marvelous photographs. Many of these have never been published elsewhere: a picture of Booker T. Washington speaking on the main stage with Mark Twain sitting behind him on the platform, a photograph of twenty-six-year-old veteran of the Boer War - the dashing Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill - alighting from a hansom cab in front of the Hall on his way to a lecture in 1901, and dozens more.