Carnegie plus one
"A cable channel... but for classical music! It could be called ‘The Carnegie Hall Channel.’” I was on a beam reach to Eatons Neck about a quarter-century ago when a young man named Lawrence Perelman made this blustery pronouncement. We were Bill Buckley’s guests for an overnight sail across Long Island Sound. My first thought was: good luck with that. My second thought was no one wants to watch classical music on television. PBS’s Great Performances? More like lesser performances. With pixels the size of Cheez-Its and tin-can soundtracks, the experience was nothing like the real thing. But Perelman, an impresario who became an advisor to classical artists and institutions, as well as a friend, kept waving his baton long after we returned to Stamford.
