Music: New Sound in Manhattan

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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 première—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.