Tchaikovsky Condects Carnegie Hall's Grand Opening

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky stood at the podium and raised his baton before an audience that had spent weeks debating whether the new concert hall on Seventh Avenue and 57th Street would have acceptable acoustics. The inaugural concert at the Music Hall, later renamed Carnegie Hall, on May 5, 1891, answered the question within the first measures. The room's warm, resonant sound would make it one of the most celebrated performance spaces in the world. The hall existed because Andrew Carnegie, the Scottish-born steel magnate, married a woman who loved music. Louise Whitfield Carnegie introduced her husband to Walter Damrosch, the conductor of the New York Symphony Society, during their honeymoon voyage to Scotland in 1887. Damrosch convinced Carnegie that New York lacked a concert hall worthy of the city's cultural ambitions, and Carnegie agreed to fund its construction at a cost of roughly $1.1 million. Architect William Burnet Tuthill, an amateur cellist, designed the building with acoustic performance as the primary consideration. The main auditorium seated 2,800 in a shoe-box shape with an arched ceiling that distributed sound evenly throughout the space. The stage had no proscenium arch, placing performers in closer acoustic contact with the audience. Tuthill used layers of plaster and concrete with airspaces between them to create natural reverberation. Tchaikovsky conducted his Marche Solennelle during the five-night opening festival, sharing the program with Damrosch and other performers. The Russian composer, already the most famous musician in the world, had been persuaded to make the transatlantic journey with a fee of $2,500 and first-class accommodations. He found New York overwhelming but the audience enthusiastic. Carnegie Hall became the premier concert venue in the United States and arguably the world. Virtually every major classical musician, jazz artist, and popular performer of the twentieth century played there. The building narrowly escaped demolition in 1960, when the opening of Lincoln Center threatened to make it redundant. Violinist Isaac Stern led a public campaign that saved the hall, and the city purchased it in 1962.