Carnegie Hall

Carnegie Hall’s Opening Night Gala
San Francisco Symphony

This is a Carnegie Hall Opening Night you will never forget. A pair of vocal superstars—Renée Fleming and Audra McDonald—join Perspectives artist Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony for an evening of favorites from opera and music theater. To add to the festive occasion, there’s exhilarating orchestral music by Gershwin and Ravel’s lushly scored waltz.

San Francisco Symphony

Michael Tilson Thomas had a lifelong relationship with Stravinsky, dating back to performing in Stravinsky's presence during Tilson Thomas's student days in Los Angeles. This all-Stravinsky program promises spectacular orchestral colors, rhythmic vitality, unique melodies, and plenty of excitement. Stravinsky’s ballet Pétrouchka is a thrilling masterpiece where Russian folk tunes enliven brilliant musical tableaux, while the savage rhythms, earthy melodies, and drama of Le sacre du printemps make it a cornerstone of 20th-century music. Another side of Stravinsky shines in his witty Violin Concerto, a four-movement dazzler where pungent harmonies, beautiful song-like passages, and jazzy syncopated rhythms challenge the soloist and captivate the listener.

Jonas Kaufmann, Tenor

Operetta and popular song were flourishing, and a new medium was making a splash in Germany during the 1920s and ‘30s. Benefiting from the popularity of the new “talkie” format, film producers looked to the leading composers from the worlds of cabaret, operetta, and popular music to write works for the singing actors of the day. Jonas Kaufmann performs many of these selections in an evening named after one such song by operetta star Richard Tauber.

Sphinx Virtuosi

The masterful musicians of the Detroit-based Sphinx Organization make a timely statement in a program that features music from around the globe. They perform a highly dramatic string orchestra arrangement of Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 8, as well as music from Spain, Syria, South Africa, and the US. Additionally, they give the New York premiere of a work by Terence Blanchard co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall. These marvelous performers prove that music has no borders.

Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique

Here’s a rare opportunity to hear the music as Berlioz would have when the piquant winds, warm brass, and crisp strings of a celebrated period-instrument orchestra make his vibrant colors and gorgeous melodies soar even higher. Moving tales inspired by Romantic poetry and classical antiquity are set to music by a quintessentially French Romantic. Berlioz cast the viola as the protagonist in Harold in Italy, a moody and melodic work recalling Byron’s wandering hero, while two legendary queens—Dido and Cleopatra—come to life in impassioned vocal music.

Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique

Obsession, madness, murder, and redemption are portrayed in the richly Romantic music—performed on period instruments—of Berlioz. His Symphonie fantastique is a phantasmagoric tale that depicts an opium overdose, nightmares of murder, a guillotine execution, and a terrifying Witches’ Sabbath. Berlioz called his rarely heard Lélio a “conclusion and complement” to the Symphonie fantastique. Lélio uses vocal soloists, chorus, and orchestra—including two pianists performing on one instrument—to tell of the Symphonie hero’s awaking from the nightmare, his musings on art, and his ultimate triumph as a composer.

Belcea Quartet

Late string quartets by Mozart and Mendelssohn frame a new work by Joseph Phibbs, co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall. Mozart’s penultimate quartet is noteworthy for its refinement and free-flowing melodies. Mendelssohn’s final quartet intensely churns in its first two movements, reflecting his grief over the death of his sister Fanny. Its slow movement is a beautifully tender song that may well be an elegy for both Fanny and, with his own health failing, himself—it is an unforgettable moment of calm before the anguished finale.

Igor Levit, Piano

Igor Levit’s last Carnegie Hall recital was called by The New Criterion critic “a peak pianistic experience of my concertgoing life. I left the hall feeling high.” Now it’s your turn. Cited by The New York Times for being “consistently game for unconventional approaches to the repertory,” he plays such rarities as Brahms’s left-hand arrangement of Bach’s Chaconne, a rarely heard set of Schumann variations, a monumental Liszt organ work arranged by Busoni, and more.

The New York Pops

Electrifying entertainer Frankie Moreno brings us back to the dawn of rock ‘n’ roll, featuring the greatest hits of Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, and The Beatles.

Youssou NDOUR

Grammy Award–winning singer-songwriter and activist Youssou NDOUR makes his eagerly anticipated return to Carnegie Hall. Named one of the world’s 50 great voices by NPR, the Senegalese superstar’s vibrant vocals anchor powerful songs that have made him the world’s leading performer of mbalax, his country’s music that fuses classic African praise-singing, percussion, and guitar-based pop.