A Carnegie Hall Christmas Concert Explained

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A Carnegie Hall Christmas Concert is an 89-minute television film starring the opera singers Kathleen Battle and Frederica von Stade, the jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, the Wynton Marsalis Septet, the American Boychoir, the Christmas Concert Chorus, the Orchestra of St. Luke's and the pianist and conductor André Previn. It first aired as part of PBS's Great Performances series in 1991, and was subsequently released on VHS, Laserdisc, DVD and CD. It was jointly produced by CAMI Video, Sony, PBS and WNET.

Synopsis

The film presents thirty pieces of music performed before an audience in the main auditorium of Carnegie Hall, New York City on 8 December 1991. The soloists mostly stand on a multi-level platform at the front of the stage, the back of which is decorated with three large, lavish panels of Christmas imagery inspired by designs on a Russian lacquer box. The music, presented without any interrupting dialogue, is both sacred and secular. It is drawn from many traditions and performed in a variety of styles, ranging from a cappella hymnody to jazz improvisation. Included in the programme are American spirituals, traditional European carols, songs by the twentieth century American composers Hugh Martin, Richard Rodgers and Mel Tormé and compositions by the classical composers Adam, Handel, Humperdinck, Mozart, Praetorius, Prokofiev and Reger. The concert's arrangements by Nancy Allen, Arthur Harris and Alexander Courage – the first composer of music for Star Trek – were specially commissioned for it.

DVD chapter listing

CD track listing

Personnel

Musical

Other

Broadcast and home media history

The concert was first aired in the US on 11 December 1991, broadcast by PBS in its Great Performances series. There was an 8 p.m. transmission on Channel 13 and an 8:45 p.m. transmission on Channel 21, the former accompanied by a stereo simulcast on WQXR. In 1992 PBS broadcast the concert again, and Sony released it on VHS and Laserdisc.[3] [4] Subsequently, Kultur reissued the concert on DVD (catalogue number D4157). presenting it unabridged, framed at 4:3, in colour (using the NTSC video standard) and with Dolby Digital stereo sound.[2] Kultur's disc offered no bonus features nor any liner notes beyond a rudimentary track listing.

On 6 October 1992, Sony released the concert on a 76-minute CD (catalogue number SK 48235).[5] Sony's disc omitted the concert's only purely orchestral items (the opening fanfare and the Troika from Prokofiev's Lieutenant Kijé) and arranged the other pieces of music in a different order.[5] It came with a 20-page insert booklet that included no texts or translations but provided a detailed track listing, an essay on the concert and seven photographs taken during the performance.[5] In 2016 Sony reissued the album with a 52-page booklet in their 18-CD collection Frederica von Stade: The Complete Columbia Recital Albums (catalogue number 88875183412).[1]

Critical reception

John J. O'Connor reviewed the concert in a television column in The New York Times on 11 December 1991. He had mixed feelings about the producers' choice of music, some of which he thought hackneyed. "Am I the only person in New York", he asked, "who, after sitting through hundreds of ornate renditions, finds 'The 12 Days of Christmas' numbingly tedious?" He was more complimentary about the calypso-infused 'Mary's Little Boy Chile' and a sequence of traditional American Marian numbers, as well as rousing ensemble versions of 'Go Tell It on the Mountain' and 'Angels We Have Heard On High'. He conceded that Previn's conducting and the concert's specially commissioned arrangements made some old chestnuts sound new again. Battle, in puff-ball-sleeved scarlet, was "quite dazzling in her upper registers and gets there often enough to make sure no one forgets it". Von Stade, sheathed in glittering emerald, was more expressive in her hymns than in her spirituals. Wynton Marsalis punctuated proceedings with his trumpet's "soulful wailings". The standing ovation at the end of the concert was well earned.[6] The English classical vocal critic J. B. Steane reviewed the CD edition of the concert in Gramophone in December 1992. He mocked the album's choice of compositions and arrangements, noting that 'The Twelve Days of Christmas' included a fragment of 'Ist ein Traum' from Der Rosenkavalier, that Reger's lullaby sounded like a duet that Strauss's Sophie and Octavian might have sung at their first Christmas together and that 'Silent Night' had been given a "smoochy accompaniment" which at times sounded as though it had been devised for another song altogether. For the performers, on the other hand, he had nothing but praise, applauding Battle's "unflawed purity of tone", von Stade's "characteristic warmth", Marsalis's eloquent trumpet, the cool expertise of his Septet and the geniality of Previn on the podium. All was bright and sweetly shining in the light of Carnegie Hall, he wrote – it was all "so happy and snappy, so gifted and sweet" that its sheer quantity of Christmas icing sugar made him scowl like Charles Dickens's Ebenezer Scrooge. Still, the concert was rich in ingenuity and charm and it was obvious that the audience had enjoyed it, and the album had captured the spirit of the occasion successfully.[7]

See also

Notes and References

  1. Frederica von Stade: The Complete Columbia Recital Albums, Sony CD, 88875183412, 2016
  2. A Carnegie Hall Christmas Concert, Kultur DVD, D4157, 1992
  3. A Carnegie Hall Christmas Concert, Sony VHS, 1992
  4. A Carnegie Hall Christmas Concert, Sony Laserdisc, 1992
  5. A Carnegie Hall Christmas Concert, Sony CD, SK 48235, 1992
  6. News: Review/Television; A Veritable Feast of Music for Christmas. The New York Times. 11 December 1991. O'Connor. John J..
  7. Gramophone, December 1992, p. 145

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