What with the songbirds Renée Fleming, Joyce DiDonato, Isabel Leonard, Audra McDonald, and Michael Feinstein on hand, a good time is sure to be had by all. The incredible ivory-tickler lineup includes Emanuel Ax, Andy Einhorn, Evgeny Kissin, Lang Lang, and Daniil Trifonov. Still, let’s think back. Remember how in 1962, when the New York Philharmonic decamped for Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall was marked for the wrecking ball? Only thanks to the tireless campaigning of the latter-day Paganini Isaac Stern was cultural tragedy averted. And in 1976, perhaps in a state of lingering euphoria, Stern organized a gala to celebrate the institution’s 85th Anniversary. Recorded live, the program was released on the Columbia Masterworks label under the goosed-up title Concert of the Century. Was the hype justified? Yeah, it was. Leonard Bernstein conducted. Bernstein, Stern, and Yehudi Menuhin played Bach. Mstislav Rostropovich and Vladimir Horowitz doubled up for Rachmaninoff. Horowitz accompanied Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in the iconic baritone’s only Carnegie Hall traversal of Robert Schumann’s immortal Dichterliebe. And to clear the hall at the end, the assembled luminaries raised their voices in Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus, thankfully with the Oratorio Society of New York on hand to drown them out. —Matthew Gurewitsch