Glittering Galas Help Mark Carnegie Hall Centennial : Music: Tchaikovsky helped open the place in 1891; a century later, virtually all of musical New York turned out to mark the date.

NEW YORK — Much about the city appears grim these days, what with a serious budgetary crisis that will likely hit the arts hard. But Carnegie Hall, at least, has so far lost none of its luster.

A pair of glittery galas on Sunday, celebrating that hall’s 100th birthday, were just the kind of festive occasions that Carnegie, which opened its doors May 5, 1891, in a gala concert with Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky as guest of honor, is without equal in presenting.

Sunday, all of musical New York, it seemed, was there, either onstage or in the audience, members of which had paid as much as $2,500 to attend both concerts, with a dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, in between.

There were the expected array of political and business leaders and celebrities. But even the beggars working the dense crowds that had congregated on the famous corner of 57th Street and Seventh Avenue, seemed impressed: one loudly rebuked a stingy passerby, announcing exactly what Barbara Walters had just given.

Although the programs--which were televised live throughout the country and relayed to Europe, Japan and South America as well--were properly stellar, the real attraction was building, itself.

Throughout its 100-year history, the warmly elegant hall has been a place musicians love to perform in and audiences love to attend. It is unlikely that there has been a great soloist, orchestra or conductor of our century who hasn’t appeared on its stage.

That accumulated greatness tends to inspire profoundly anyone who walks out on its stage. The Los Angeles Philharmonic, for instance, invariably achieves a luminous quality to its playing in Carnegie that is nearly impossible to match in the duller Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. No one ever takes Carnegie for granted.

Physically, too, Carnegie has always been an inviting place to hear music. It looks splendid, still spiffy from its major restoration five years ago, and Sunday saw it at its best, bedecked with bouquets, gauzy bunting and golden lighting that even the harsh glare of television lights couldn’t diminish.

The acoustics, while unfortunately losing an extra bit of presence from that restoration, can still carry stirring music gloriously when the performance is good enough.

An unsentimental New York did, however, almost demolish Carnegie in 1960, proposing to replace it with a tasteless party-red office tower, once the resident New York Philharmonic had announced its intention to move uptown to the new Lincoln Center. The savior of Carnegie then, its leader ever since and clearly the heroic presence of Sunday’s galas was the violinist Isaac Stern, who was afforded a long standing ovation for his performance with cellist Yo-Yo Ma of the first movement of Brahms’ Double Concerto at the evening concert.

That later concert featured the New York Philharmonic conducted by Zubin Mehta and James Levine and a parade of famous soloists.

Most memorable were Levine’s majestic account of Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man” and Leontyne Price’s rousing singing of an aria from Strauss’s “Die Agyptische Helena,” in which she soared unbelievably over the huge waves of sound Levine pumped from the orchestra. Levine also accompanied pianist Alfred Brendel’s classy performance of Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy.

Mehta, who is nearing the end of his last season as music director of the Philharmonic, set the vigorously intense tone that characterized the Brahms movement, and he closed the gala with a magnificently played--and, for Mehta, an unusually soulful--performance of the last movement of Mahler’s Third Symphony.

That movement was to have been conducted by Leonard Bernstein, and was, instead, played in his memory.

“I cannot tell you how much we miss him,” Mehta told the audience before the performance, his voice showing rare emotion.

“So, here’s to you, Lenny.”

The Champagne reception at the Waldorf afterward might also have been dedicated to Bernstein. It featured an excruciatingly loud, cheesy hotel band playing old rock favorites to the obvious discomfort of many Carnegie patrons.

Although this seemed little more than a square version of a Grammy party, it was just the kind of irreverent gesture that Bernstein could always be counted on to produce at such glorifying occasions.

But it was also the evening’s only reminder that Carnegie has a noble history of hosting great jazz, folk and pop music.