Celebrate Carnegie Hall Anniversary with Jascha Heifetz Playing Tchaikovsky

Today Carnegie Hall cel­e­brates its 120th anniver­sary. Designed by archi­tect William Bur­net Tuthill and financed by phil­an­thropist Andrew Carnegie, the famed con­cert venue opened its doors in 1891, right between West 56th and 57th Streets in New York City. Since then, Carnegie Hall has gained a rep­u­ta­tion for its unri­valed acoustics (some have called it the “Stradi­var­ius of the Con­cert World”) and pret­ty much every impor­tant musi­cal fig­ure of the 20th cen­tu­ry played there.

The hall will cel­e­brate its anniver­sary with a gala fea­tur­ing Yo-Yo Ma. But we’re tak­ing anoth­er tack and high­light­ing a vin­tage clip from the 1947 film Carnegie Hall.  Direct­ed by Edgar Ulmer, this sequence gives you Jascha Heifetz, the famed vio­lin­ist, play­ing the first move­ment of Tchaikovsky’s vio­lin con­cer­to. Heifetz played Carnegie Hall for the first time in 1917, when he was only 16 years old. This clip, filmed 30 years lat­er at the same great con­cert hall, has been viewed 1.5 mil­lion times…