New Sound in Manhattan

By midafternoon, the carpets had not been tacked, some of the seats were not bolted down, the stair railings were still being sanded. Six hours later, after some 800 hired limousines had converged on the area, braying their way through the clogged streets. New York Philharmonic Conductor Leonard Bernstein mounted the podium, bowed to the audience and Mrs. John F. Kennedy, and set the hall ablaze with sound. There would be better nights of music at Philharmonic Hall--the opening night's program was more an acoustical than an artistic success--but there would be no nights more glittering or more laden with meaning. Manhattan's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts was at last a going concern, the 120-year-old Philharmonic at last had a permanent home, and the world of music had a new hall that could stand comparison with the very best.

Barnum-Sized Bushel. As the first building completed in the 14-acre, $142 million Lincoln Center complex, Philharmonic Hall attracted to its stage last week a Barnum-sized bushel of musical talent. On opening night, Conductor Bernstein used not only the Philharmonic but also three choruses (the Juilliard, Schola Cantorum, and Columbus Boychoir) and twelve top-priced soloists, including Tenors Richard Tucker and Jon Vickers, Soprano Eileen Farrell and Mezzo-Soprano Shirley Verrett-Carter. The Philharmonic was followed in later programs by the Boston, the Philadelphia and the Cleveland orchestras, by the New York Pro Musica, the Juilliard String Quartet, the Metropolitan Opera, assorted pianists (including Van Cliburn), and by Adlai Stevenson, who, in excellent voice, provided the narration to Aaron Copland's A Lincoln Portrait.

Musically, perhaps the most distinguished evenings of the week were provided by the Cleveland Orchestra under George Szell and the Boston Symphony, which not only played superbly under its new conductor, Erich Leinsdorf (see below), but included in its program what proved to be the week's most distinguished premiere--Samuel Barber's Piano Concerto, with John Browning as soloist, Composers Copland, Walter Piston and William Bergsma had also provided opening-week pieces, all of them competent occasional music (Copland's brassy, sinewy Connotations for Orchestra, Piston's stately Lincoln Center Festival Overture, Bergsma's festive In Celebration: Toccata for the Sixth Day). But of the four new works, Barber's seemed most likely to survive in the repertory. A busy, intricate piece, it blazed with melody and bristled with ideas. The audience gave it, and Composer Barber, a standing ovation in the most spontaneous accolade of the week.

No Room for Standees. The crowds that made their way past the surrounding rubble to last week's concerts entered a nine-story hall designed by Architect Max Abramovitz, its glass sides framed by 42 columns faced with travertine, its main foyer rising almost 50 ft. and dominated by a five-ton "space sculpture," still unfinished, by Richard Lippold. With 2,646 seats (with holes on the underside to absorb sound), Philharmonic Hall is 114 seats smaller than Manhattan's Carnegie Hall, and it provides no room for standees. But the opening gave New York two major concert halls for the first time in 35 years (since the demolition of Aeolian Hall), and it clearly provided a test, as Carnegie Hall Managing Director Julius Bloom noted, of "the amount of music the community can absorb." For the coming season at least, both Philharmonic Hall and Carnegie Hall are well booked, and certain orchestras--including the Philadelphia, the Leningrad Philharmonic and the Little Orchestra Society--are scheduled to play in both places.

Moving Clouds. The favorite debate last week was just how much hall New York had got for an investment of $15.4 million. The answers were as varied as the critics (the New York Times's Harold Schonberg spent his evenings scurrying from seat to seat trying to hear the cellos). After the first concert, the engineers lowered some of the 136 acoustical "clouds" suspended from the ceiling that determine much of the hall's sound; the experiments with acoustics, they reported, might go on for another year. (Added Chief Engineer Leo Beranek: "We do not intend to tear down the hall and re build.") The acoustical debate, in fact. became so silly that it was even joined by the New York Herald Tribune's Art Buchwald, who proposed a Save Lincoln Center Committee. "Acoustically speaking," gibed Buchwald only a few days after the opening. "Philharmonic Hall is still excellent, and the passage of time has only improved the wonderful sounds that emanate from the rafters."

Some of the differences of opinion resulted from the fact that Carnegie Hall has provided New Yorkers--and indeed much of the musical world--with a standard of sound since 1891. The sound of Philharmonic Hall is cut more nearly to the pattern of modern taste--with less ambiance, more clarity and definition. It might take engineers time to tune it and audiences time to become attuned. But even in its first week, it clearly had the sound of a great concert hall.

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