Violinist Gil Shaham and cellist Yo-Yo Ma will help usher in Carnegie Hall’s 120th birthday at a May 5 gala concert with the New York Philharmonic led by Alan Gilbert. Shaham and Ma are joined by pianist Emanuel Ax for Beethoven’s Triple Concerto. The Phil also will perform Dvorak’s Carnival Overture and Gershwin’s An American in Paris (which originally premiered at the hall in 1928), among other works.

The concert will be aired on Classical 105.9 FM WQXR in New York and streamed online at wqxr.org.

On May 31, the gala concert will be broadcast on PBS’s Great Performances program.

Throughout the 2011-2012 anniversary season, Carnegie Hall programs will focus on music created in the period that gave birth to the venerable concert hall.

Those programs will include landmark works by Bartok, Brahms, Bruckner, Debussy, Dvorak, Elgar, Mahler, Rachmaninoff, Mahler, Schoenberg, Sibelius, Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky, Webern, and Wolf, among others.

Carnegie hall has been home to the NBC Orchestra under Arturo Toscanini and the New York Philharmonic. The Midtown Manhattan venue also has hosted many famous premieres, including Dvorak's Symphony No. 9 (From the New World), Weber's Symphonic Metamorphoses on Themes, Stravinsky's Symphony in Three Movements, and Charles Ives' Symphonies Nos. 2 and 4.

The violinist Jascha Heifetz, who later championed the halls renovation, had his US premiere at Carnegie Hall in 1917.

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