The Empty Carnegie Hall Performance That Revolutionized Music

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To an empty Carnegie Hall, the New York Philharmonic performed Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor, later released as an LP recording under Columbia Records. Internet Archive. Public Domain

The members of the Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York (now known as the New York Philharmonic) assembled at Carnegie Hall on May 16, 1945—nine days after Germany had surrendered to the Allies—to perform Felix Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor. Joining them was conductor Bruno Walter and violin soloist Nathan Milstein—two virtuoso products of a tumultuous early 20th century Europe.

Walter, who later in life changed his name from Bruno Schlesinger, was born in 1876 to a middle-class Jewish family in Berlin. At the age of 8, he entered the Stern Conservatory to study music, and, by 1894, he had made his conducting debut in Cologne.