The New York Times Book of New York

by The New York Times

  “The Bronx,” he said, as if to say, You wanna make something of it?

  Word of two lost “sheep”—Radio City code for children—was radioed to the security office, near a side entrance on West 51st Street. This is where Stage Door Johnnies drop off flowers for Rockettes who have beguiled them, and where security officers collect and record lost things found.

  After 30 days, anything unclaimed goes. Cellphones are destroyed, although there is talk of donating them to shelters for battered women. The rest of the stash is forwarded to the Salvation Army or some other charity. Gifts, you might say, from visitors to this great metropolis.

  But not everything lost remains lost. Claimed in the late afternoon of the penultimate day of 2004: two young sheep.

  Making History Began On Opening Day In 1891

  By TIM PAGE | December 16, 1986

  FROM THE SPRING EVENING IT FIRST OPENED its doors as the Music Hall through its near demise by a wrecker’s ball, Carnegie Hall has been at the center of some of the most dramatic moments in the musical world.

  On May 5, 1891, it was the setting of the first American performance of Berlioz’s “Te Deum,” featuring the New York Symphony Society and the Oratorio Society Chorus, under the direction of Walter Damrosch. And Tchaikovsky made his American debut, conducting several short pieces. More than a negligible chunk of musical history already—and all on opening night!

  In 1917, the 16-year-old violinist Jascha Heifetz made his American debut at Carnegie Hall and was immediately hailed as a phenomenon. Vladimir Horowitz played his first concert at Carnegie Hall in 1928 and for years Mr. Horowitz would play only at Carnegie Hall.

  Carnegie Hall was the site of the first New York performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 8, in 1912, and of Schoenberg’s “Gurre-Lieder,” in 1932. Until the completion of Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall was long the home of the New York Philharmonic.

  Popular music is also prominent in Carnegie Hall’s history. The hall was the site also of Benny Goodman’s “Sing Sing Sing” concert in 1938. The Beatles made their initial New York concert appearance at Carnegie Hall on Feb. 12, 1964.

  Some day, members of the audience who attended last night’s gala may tell their children about the night the hall reopened after a six-month renovation. Think of it—Isaac Stern, Benita Valente, Marilyn Horne, Yo-Yo Ma, Frank Sinatra, Zubin Mehta with the New York Philharmonic, a world premiere by Leonard Bernstein and a surprise performance by Vladimir Horowitz, all in one evening. Just one more night of history at Carnegie Hall.

  Isaac Stern, Crusading Virtuoso

  September 28, 1960

  ISAAC STERN WAS A LOGICAL CHOICE FOR soloist with the New York Philharmonic at the first concert last night in the newly saved and refurbished Carnegie Hall, and not just because he sparked the successful fight to save the 70-year-old hall. By upbringing, training and predilection, Mr. Stern can be classified as an American violinist.

  Like many other famous violinists, he was born in Russia, but he arrived in San Francisco at the age of 10 months. Not only is he one of the few first-rank musicians of his generation who was trained entirely in this country, but also nearly all of his studies were in California. He describes his style of playing as “American,” and he has proved to be a successful musical ambassador for this country. He was touring Russia at the time of the U-2 incident and the Summit Conference breakdown last spring, but the Soviet public cheered him just the same.

  Although he made his debut with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra under Pierre Monteux at the age of 11, he did not explode onto a startled musical world in the way that prodigies are supposed to do. Even as a seasoned 17-year-old, his New York debut did not take the town by storm. Mr. Stern matured slowly and the critics and public grew with him. Now, at 40, he has worked his way into recognition as one of the handful of violin greats.

  Mr. Stern is short, stocky, full of energy. On a Russian trip a number of years back, he burned the ear of Premier Nikita Khrushchev at a garden party on the subject of cultural exchange. That was before it had become Soviet policy to encourage artistic swaps, and Mr. Stern wanted to see more of it.

  And, at a moment when few thought there was any hope, Mr. Stern headed the Citizens Committee for Carnegie Hall and turned the tide in a last-ditch battle with the city. He has now been elected president of the new Carnegie Hall Corporation.

  A Requiem for Tenants of Carnegie

  By JIM DWYER | August 1, 2007

  THE PROCESS SERVER PLAYED HIS KNUCKLES on the door, fortissimo.

  Door to door, knuckle to metal, the rap-rap-rap ringing through the space beyond, not a flicker of hesitancy. And in the eviction papers delivered by the process server, the language was just as decisive, with one exception.

  The landlord “prays for a final judgment of eviction, awarding to the petitioner possession of the premises described as follows: all rooms and areas, Studio 1110, in the building known as 881 Seventh Avenue, a.k.a. 154 West 57th Street, New York, New York.” The building has yet another alias, which was not mentioned: Carnegie Hall.

  For more than a century, artists and performers and musicians have nested, unnoticed but in plain sight, directly above Carnegie Hall in tower studios built by the industrialist Andrew Carnegie. Some artists actually lived there; others used the space to write scores or choreograph dances or practice for concerts. Now, the last 50 of these tenants are being evicted, a process that began two weeks ago. The trustees of Carnegie Hall say they need the space for educational programs, rehearsals and backstage areas.

  Mr. Bergman, a screenwriter and filmmaker, has worked in the studios for 25 years.

  “I don’t have to be in that building,” he said. “But I love that building. When I moved in 25 years ago, I was next door to a ballet studio; it was like a Degas painting. Wynn Handman was teaching actors—he’s still there, they served his papers on his 80th birthday.

  “Brando, who I later worked with, had lived on my floor,” Mr. Bergman continued. “Marilyn Monroe took acting lessons there, Lucille Ball took voice. It’s a great feeling of an artistic community. If you’re a writer, it’s great. You can’t get that in a building of lawyers.”

  The music hall was built by Andrew Carnegie in 1890, and the towers, including studios with double-height ceilings, were added a few years later. The property was sold by his family in 1925.

  Carnegie Hall now has spaces and subdivisions called Zankel, Weil, Kaplan, Rohatyn, Shorin. Just as teenagers sneak into train yards to spray-paint their tags on subway cars, the fabulously rich are queued to put their names on great works. Philanthropy is both an expression of love for humanity, and the graffiti of wealth.

  881 Seventh Avenue a.k.a. 154 West 57th Street a.k.a. Carnegie Hall is in the market for yet another alias.

  A Musician’s Musician

  By BERNARD HOLLAND | October 16, 1990

  IGOR STRAVINSKY CALLED HIM “A DEPARTment store of music,” but Leonard Bernstein had one permanent place of business. It was the New York Philharmonic.

  The Philharmonic launched his career in a now famous substitution for Bruno Walter in 1943. Mr. Bernstein was its music director from 1958 to 1969 and its laureate conductor thereafter. And for the musicians in the orchestra, working with Bernstein was a singular experience.

  “Bernstein came from a different era,” said Newton Mansfield, a violinist in the orchestra for 30 years. “Conductors today work for reliability and competence. They prepare in rehearsal for exactly what’s going to happen in the concert. Bernstein would talk about a piece in rehearsal, but if you asked him if that was what he’d do in performance, he said, ‘I don’t know.’ He might get a little faster than planned. The audience might get him excited. It was the unexpected that drew us all in.”

  Bernstein’s spontaneity forced the orchestra to go along with the mood, not just with the movement of the hand. “Today too many conductors are worried about a section coming in at just the right time or that ensemble is exactly together,” said
Mr. Mansfield. “With Bernstein you always stood a chance of a sloppy entrance but nothing stopped the movement of the line. He treated phrases as if they were a play with a plot. He wanted you to know what the phrase meant, where it was going, the peaks and valleys, where you would end up. He didn’t have much technique, but personality overrode the need for it.”

  Did players resent the theatricality of Mr. Bernstein’s stage presence, his tendency toward loquaciousness and overt displays of affection? “Every once in a while,” said Mr. Mansfield. “In the long run, however, we knew where our interests lay. We had a relationship with Bernstein like that with no other conductor I have ever known.”

  Despite the theatrics, musicians recognized him as a professional. Orchestra players pride themselves on being able to spot phonies on the podium in a matter of a few minutes. They remember Mr. Bernstein as someone who came to rehearsal with his homework done. “He studied all the editions, and he had specific reasons for the way he phrased music,” said Leonard Davis, who is in his fifth decade as a violist in the orchestra. “We re-recorded the Mahler Second with him. He found little details down deep that few of us in the orchestra had noticed. We were surprised they were there.”

  “And really, he had the modesty of all truly talented people,” said Mr. Davis. “He did all his work in private. No one ever knew how long it took him to learn a piece or compose something.” Mr. Bernstein told a concert audience several summers ago that he would have given 10 years of his life to have written the introduction to “Stars and Stripes Forever.”

  Sharry Sylar, an oboist said, “In my years at the orchestra, we yearned for his conducting. I was in that concert at the Berlin wall”—on Christmas Day 1989, when he conducted Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, with its “Ode to Joy” finale—“and in the last movement, when the chorus sang the word ‘Freiheit’ instead of ‘Freude,’ I shall always remember how his face lit up.”

  Views Back (and Forward) On an Outdoor Stage

  By ANTHONY TOMMASINI | July 17, 2008

  Concertgoers enjoy the Philharmonic on a hot summer evening at Central Park.

  WHEN THE CONDUCTOR ALAN GILBERT WAS A boy, some of his first inspiring experiences with classical music came from attending the New York Philharmonic’s concerts in the city’s parks. At the time he was tagging along with his parents, both violinists in the orchestra, he explained to the crowd that turned out for Tuesday night’s Philharmonic concert in Central Park.

  “I love the New York Philharmonic, I love New York, I love Central Park, and I love the Philharmonic’s concerts in the parks,” Mr. Gilbert told the audience.

  Then, after mentioning that his mother, Yoko Takebe, was still playing with the orchestra, he turned to her and said, “Hi, Mom!” which brought applause from all corners of the Great Lawn, where 63,000 people, according to official estimate, had turned out to hear some music and enjoy the perfect weather.

  Mr. Gilbert is poised to become the Philharmonic’s music director in the fall of 2009. That he was so eager to conduct this summer’s final park concert, only his second (the first was on Monday night at Prospect Park in Brooklyn), seemed an encouraging indicator of his desire to connect with New York audiences.

  The concert was terrific. For the first half the enormously popular young pianist Lang Lang was the soloist in Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto. Onstage was a concert grand of a rich red color. Chinese Red?

  It is one of only two red Steinways in the world, Mr. Lang said, speaking in English from notes he had jotted down. It is being auctioned to raise money to aid the victims of the May 12 earthquake in China, “my home country,” he said.

  He then sat down and gave an exciting and brilliant account of the Tchaikovsky concerto. When he first gained attention in America some years ago, Mr. Lang was an unquestionable virtuoso, with white-hot energy, awesome technique, intuitive instincts and exuberant personality. But his playing could be undisciplined and indulgent, and he took a lot of criticism for his excesses.

  After intermission Mr. Gilbert conducted an intelligent and lively performance of Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony and ended the program with a rhapsodic account of Sibelius’s “Finlandia.”

  Then came the encore, selected as in earlier concerts this summer by audience members who chose between two options—the “Toreador’s Song” (arranged for orchestra) from “Carmen” and Rossini’s “William Tell” Overture—by sending text messages to an announced address. Rossini won, and the performance was rousing. And most people stayed around for the postconcert fireworks display, which looked especially splendid on this balmy and enjoyable night.

  The Twilight of a Zany Street

  By GILBERT MILLSTEIN | January 1, 1950

  Jazz cafes and nightclubs lined the famed “Swing Street” (West 52nd Street) in 1948.

  HAVING SURVIVED 32 SPEAKEASIES, TWO varieties of jazz, burlesque and a general casting away of inhibition, West 52nd Street is now decaying noisily in the face of imminent demolition and respectability.

  It has lived dangerously for the past 25 years or so, lit up in five colors of neon tubing. Ultimately the wreckers will haul it away, piece by piece, like a musical comedy heading for Cain’s after a long run. The first phthisic intimation of this came when Rockefeller Center put up the Esso Building a few years ago and a damp granite chill fell over the street.

  Until the early 20’s the old five-story brownstones housed Rhinelanders, Iselins, Wagstaffs and Bernard M. Baruch. They were followed by some of the most outstanding speakeasies in America, including Leon & Eddie’s and Jack & Charlie’s “21.” In a newspaper interview on his return from Europe in 1932 George Jean Nathan, the drama critic, declared: “Jack and Charlie of my favorite speakeasy would make the best president and vice president. The speakeasy makes money and the customers and owners are happy. In what other business is that true?”

  Today 52nd Street is scarred with all the dubious accretions of a quarter-century. These include bebop, or bop, a style of music whose adherents say a thing is “cool” when they mean it is hot; and burlesque, a form of entertainment theoretically banished from New York in 1942 by the late Fiorello H. La Guardia.

  Four of the clubs on the block are devoted to the strippers, who call themselves “exotic dancers” and exponents of “bacchanals” these days. They still take off most of their clothes, however, and their owners get into trouble with the authorities. Several weeks ago, three of the four were under suspension by the State Liquor Authority for indecent performances. The proprietor of one place, the Nocturne, pasted a large sign above the small suspension notice announcing that the place was being redecorated and would reopen on Nov. 14. That was also the day his suspension was lifted.

  There is an inclination to forget that “21” was once nothing more than a pleasant speakeasy that went to extraordinary lengths to foil the prohibition people. Nobody ever got anything on Jack & Charlie’s.

  The place devised an extraordinary system which included four push-buttons in the vestibule. There were four so that the doorman would be sure to reach one no matter how muscular the agents became. When the alarm rang, all the drinks in the place were picked up and placed on the bar. Another button was pushed, and the whole bar tipped back into a wall. Everything went down a chute into the sewers.

  On the day that repeal took effect, “21’s” customers poured en masse into the street in the late afternoon to assist the help in carting indoors the first legal shipment of liquor. But all that has passed, like Judge Crater and the Stutz Bearcat. Very likely there will never be another street like it, because the same things won’t happen in the same way to people.

  Celebrating Coltrane And a Shrine to Jazz

  By PETER WATROUS | September 23, 1997

  Inside the Village Vanguard in the 1960’s.

  THERE ARE MUSICAL SHRINES THAT ARE BIG and lofty and well-heeled, and then there is the Village Vanguard, which is small and in a basement and which affects a down-at-heels look. The Carnegie Hall of jazz, the Vangua
rd, in Greenwich Village, is jazz’s heart and soul. It is now paying tribute to the saxophonist John Coltrane, who died in 1967, and whose towering reputation is in part based on the recordings he made there.

  The Carnegie Hall of jazz, the Vanguard, in Greenwich Village, is jazz’s heart and soul.

  To that end, Impulse Records is releasing a four-CD set today called “Coltrane: The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings,” which collects the tapes of a recording session Coltrane led at the Vanguard in early November of 1961. The original album, “Live at the Village Vanguard” (Impulse), is part of every progressive jazz musician’s collection; its influence on jazz is incalculable.

  It was no accident that Coltrane chose to record there. By the time he and his band walked down the stairs leading into the pie-shaped room at 178 Seventh Avenue South, at 11th Street, the Vanguard already had a reputation for consistently inciting some of the best performances in jazz.

  In part that was because of its history: great jazz musicians regularly played there, and they, in various ways, were always inspiring the musicians on the bandstand.

  In part it was the ownership; the club, run by Max Gordon, who died in 1989, was considered a good place to work and a place that valued music above commerce. And its small size made performances there especially communicative: audiences were sucked into the ebb and flow of a good performance.

  But something else prodded the musicians, too, something more competitive. And it still does.

  “The Vanguard is where musicians come and listen,” said Eric Reed, a young and gifted pianist who has performed there on his own and as part of the Wynton Marsalis group. “Whenever I play there, I’m always aware that my peers are in the audience, or that an older musician might come in to check me out,” he said. “That fires me up. I’d better be playing my best.”