In honor of ‘American Symphony’: A history of Carnegie Hall

There’s an old, old joke about the prestigious New York City concert venue Carnegie Hall, which opened in 1891.

“How do you get to Carnegie Hall?”
“Practice, practice, practice.”

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Over the past 130 years, such renowned composers as Antonin Dvorak, Richard Strauss, Samuel Barber, Aaron Copland, Philip Glass and Milton Babbitt debuted their works at the Carnegie.

The new Netflix documentary “American Symphony,” which has been Oscar shortlisted for best documentary, best original score and song, follows Academy and multiple Grammy Award-winning composer/musicians/singer Jon Batiste as he prepares to debut his first symphony at Carnegie Hall while his wife Suleika Jaouad battles a recurrence of leukemia. The heart-on-your-sleeve documentary ends with the triumphant premiere Sept. 22, 2022, that even a power outage on stage couldn’t top. Variety noted in its review: “It wasn’t just the story of America, and its collage-like charms and vices. This was also Batiste’s story, and he made a handsome orchestral debut of that story at Carnegie Hall in a truly shining hour.”

Nearly eight decades earlier, Duke Ellington introduced his “New World A-Coming” on Dec. 11, 1943. According to the L.A. Philharmonic website, the composition expanded “traditional jazz forms in order to tell the story of Black America with dignity.” Ellington wrote in his autobiography “Music is My Mistress”: “I visualized this new world as a place in the distant future where there would be no war, no greed, no categorization, no non-believers, where love was unconditional, and no pronoun was good enough for God.”

Leonard Bernstein, who is the subject of Bradley Cooper’s Oscar-contender “Maestro,” was a key player in Carnegie Hall history. In fact, he’s one of the hall’s “icons.” Bernstein made his conducting debut there in 1943 and appeared in some 430 events including composer, conductor and pianist. His last appearance was March 11, 1990, when he conducted the Vienna Philharmonic; he died seven months later. He presented several of his works at the hall such as the spirited “Overture to Candide” on Jan 26, 1957, conducting the New York Philharmonic.

Also making his debut that night with the Philharmonic was renowned Canadian pianist Glenn Gould. Four years later, Bernstein’s glorious “Symphonic Dances from West Side Story” made its bow at the Carnegie Hall with Lukas Foss conducting the N.Y. Phil. And the Hall commissioned him to compose a piece for the unveiling of the restored hall on Dec 15, 1986. Bernstein conducted the NY Phil and baritone Kurt Ullmann in “Opening Prayer.” Bernstein’s work has been performed at Carnegie some 800 times.

Long before Batiste, Bernstein and Ellington there was George Gershwin. While composing Broadway musicals with his lyricist brother Ira, Gershwin also composed several influential concert works. His first, “Rhapsody in Blue”, was commissioned by Paul Whiteman to be part of a 1924 Carnegie Hall concert entitled “An Experiment in Modern Music.” However, the Hall was booked the night they wanted, so the program took place at the smaller Aeolian Hall on Feb. 12, 1924. The composition finally was heard at Carnegie Hall on April 21 that year.

The premieres of his other most best-known concert works took place at Carnegie Hall. Gershwin was soloist for the unveiling Dec. 3, 1925, of his “Piano Concerto in F Major” with Walter Damrosch conducting the New York Symphony. And Damrosch conducted the New York Phil on the Dec. 13, 1928, premiere of “An American in Paris.”

After Gershwin went to Cuba in 1932, he composed “Rumba”-later known as the “Cuban Overture,” which according to the Carnegie Hall website “incorporated bongo drums, maracas, claves, and a gourd he had collected in Havana. These percussion instruments were little-known in America at the time, and Gershwin gave explicit directions in his score that they be placed in front of the orchestra.: The piece premiered at an all-Gershwin program at Lewisohn Stadium on August 16, 1932. Gershwin described the concert at “the most exciting night I ever had.” The piece finally made it to Carnegie Hall on Jan. 19, 1937, a mere six months before his death at 38.

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