Before the sun set last night, the town’s swells had suited up in their finery and gathered for cocktails at Carnegie Hall, to open the hall’s 118th season and kick off a citywide festival celebrating our city’s beloved Lenny, that is the late composer and conductor who ran the New York Philharmonic and wrote “West Side Story” and “On the Town,” Leonard Bernstein.

“I’ve been in sneakers all summer, and this week, it’s back to the party shoes,” Joan Weill, the wife of the chairman of Carnegie Hall, Sanford Weill, said.

“New York is a city that celebrates the arts,” Mr. Weill said of his and his wife’s busy cultural week, which started Monday at the Metropolitan Opera’s 125th opening night.

One of the first to arrive in the Rohatyn Room for the pre-concert cocktails was the chief executive and chairman of Sony, the British Sir Howard Stringer, who after some coaxing from his countryman, Carnegie Hall’s executive and artistic director, Clive Gillinson, told The New York Sun that “Carnegie Hall is the greatest music hall in the world.” (He’d first stated it was one of the greatest.)

Asked if he was biased about Carnegie Hall, Mr. Gillinson said, “No, I’m not. This is the best place to be. The opportunities are endless,” Mr. Gillinson said of his post. “That’s the fun of being here. You change your life to do this.”

As to the well-known fact that no one gets to Carnegie Hall without practice, neither Mr. Gillinson nor Mr. Stringer have practiced their instruments recently. “This is a trumpet player, I’m a cellist,” Mr. Gillinson said. “I last played in school, and he last played in an orchestra,” Mr. Stringer fired back, acknowledging Mr. Gillinson’s superior mastery. “Wherever the lips go, the lips go,” Mr. Stringer said.

Former CNN newscaster Ashleigh Banfield and her husband, Howard Gould, have just purchased a piano, which Ms. Banfield said their toddler will be banging on soon. “We’re a very musical family,” Ms. Banfield, a pianist herself, said. Her husband plays the guitar.

Many supporters and executives of Channel 13 were at the reception, including donor Vivian Milstein, its president, Neal Shapiro, and its vice president of content, Stephen Segaller. The gala concert last night, which featured soprano Dawn Upshaw and Broadway talent Christine Ebersole, among others, will be broadcast in the Great Performances series on Channel 13 on October 29.

The Great Performances broadcasts are a tradition dating back to 1987, when Bernstein conducted a concert to celebrate the hall’s reopening.

“The first concert was done on commercial television,” the man who led the effort at Channel 13, as director of cultural and arts programming at the public television station, Jac Venza, said. “The board wanted to continue doing the concerts, but they weren’t going to make a lot of money, so they came to me and asked what they should do. I said, ‘We all have to pitch in.’ From then on it became an important cultural event for the country. There are more people who love classical music than we think, and they all have televisions. This brings the music to them.”

Among those privileged to be there in person: one of Bernstein’s successors as maestro of the New York Philharmonic, Lorin Maazel; the president of Juilliard, Joseph Polisi, whose students performed in the concert; the chairwoman of WNYC, Nicki Tanner; the chief executive of New-York Presbyterian Hospital, Dr. Herbert Pardes, and authors Robert and Ina Caro.

After the concert, 600 guests headed to the Waldorf-Astoria for dinner. The gala raised close to $4.2 million for Carnegie Hall’s artistic and education programming.

agordon@nysun.com