If you wanted a short history of The Carnegie Hall, and a list of most if not all the famous names who have graced the stage there, along with archive photo and video of these artistes performing. then this gala celebration would tick all the boxes for you. The Carnegie Hall is 130 years old, and in its 130 year history, like most performance venues woldwide, it sadly remains closed, and endures the longest continuous period of inactivity it has known. But the celebration still had to be done, and again, like most artistic organisations worldwide, it turned to the medium of the internet to produce an online streamed opening concert.
So far so good. However, where others have succeeded in this medium, The Carnegie Hall fell flat on it's face. Yes, the endless chatting and sycophantic adulation of the hall and it's multifarious performers was interesting, but it was much more like a TV documentary than a concert. We were shown archive footage of Leornard Bernstein conducting the overture to 'Candide', a montage of black music and performers through the early years of jazz, ragtime and gospel, Sarah Vaughan singing 'Send In The Clowns' from 1981, Frank Sinatra singing 'Mack The Knife', etc etc etc. In fact the one thing which did surprise me from all of this was the diversity of concerts offered at Carnegie Hall. The venue really does cater for all music tastes, with performances from artsites from all backgrounds and all music types, all of whom are top of their chosen field.
In terms of actual concert though, this one hour YouTube extravaganza, had precious little on offer. It started well with a perfomance on solo piano direct from Beijing by pianist Lang Lang of J S Bach's Goldberg Variation no 46. And then it went downhill from there on... The next concert performance was from Jon Batiste, who played, again on solo piano, Eubie Blake's 1899 composition, The Charlston Rag. An archive performance of James Taylor and Yo Yo Ma came next playing and singing 'Here Comes The Sun' from their concert in 2012. Direct from Paris, Angelique Kidjo and her band sang her own composition, 'And The Days Go By', and this was followed by another live hook-up from Ireland with an all female folk group - sadly I missed the name of the group and the title of the piece. The concert finished with an excerpt from the archives once again. This time Michael Tilson-Thomas conducting the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra in Bernstein's 'Mambo' from 'West Side Story'.
Reviewer Chris Benchley
on - 8/10/20
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