New York City. (Concerts And Recitals).(free Carnegie Hall concert featuring Leontyne Price and others)(Brief Article)

It's one measure of the city's response to the attack on the World Trade Center that so many artists, who have given so much to the civic and cultural life of New York, want to give something more. That's what brought James Levine, Yo-Yo Ma and members of the Met Chamber Ensemble to the stage of Carnegie Hall for a memorial concert on September 30 -- and it's what brought Leontyne Price out of retirement to join them.

Free tickets were distributed the day of the concert, and the line for them began to form at 4:30 that morning. By evening, the house was packed -- a broad mix of races, classes and ages, but mostly diehard Price fans. The concert was broadcast live by a local radio station.

Ma opened the evening with a solo, "Appalachia Waltz," by composer Mark O'Connor, creating a mood of stillness and introspection. Following remarks by Robert J. Harth, executive and artistic director of Carnegie Hall, Ma was obliged to perform Bach's Cello Suite No. 5 in C minor as a duet with a persistent cell phone in the balconies.

Levine and the chamber musicians followed, with Mozart's Quintet for Piano and Winds in E-flat Major (K. 452). The quirkily elegant work was given sparkling treatment by Levine (piano), Elaine Douvas (oboe), Ricardo Morales (clarinet), Patricia Rogers (bassoon) and Julie Landsman (horn). Levine, whose tone was especially beautiful all evening, then played another solo work by an American, William Bolcom's "Graceful Ghost Rag."

By now, the crowd had grown impatient for Price's arrival. She hadn't even entered -- she was visible only to the audience house-right through an open door -- when she received her first standing ovation. ...