Lincoln Center

Now that the excitement of its opening week is past and the awe of its introduction has started to fade, Lincoln Center's Philharmonic Hall can begin the lengthy process of growing old. It should age with remarkable grace; it is an excellent concert hall, in sound, in design, and especially in the promise of future service to the community of music. Perhaps even more important than its present condition, it has the potential for still greater achievement.

Max Abramovitz, the architect for Lincoln Center's first constituent, has presided over a pleasing and very successful mingling of art and science. He began the evolution of Philharmonic Hall in 1957 and proceeded through almost a hundred designs in over a thousand renditions, before the final plan was established.

For the sake of acoustics, unquestionably the most vital concern of a structure devoted to music, a study of sixty of the world's greatest concert halls was conducted with particular attention being paid to size, shape, and reverberation time. Abramovitz adapted the merits of the best of those sixty and added several innovations of his own.

Acoustical "clouds" were hung from the ceiling of the hall in a broad metallic sweep from the stage to the terraces in the rear, and directly behind the stage proper have been installed a series of sound chambers. The "clouds" can be raised and lowered and the chambers opened and closed to adjust the sound of the hall. These adjustments will continue for probably as much as a year but even from the beginning to the end of opening week the improvement was clearly evident.

"You never know what a hall will sound like until opening night," Leonard Bernstein has said, "and we were frankly surprised." After the first week's adjustments, his surprise developed into greater enthusiasm. The complaints of his musicians that they couldn't hear other parts of the orchestra were acted upon, other flaws were corrected, and still further improvement was anticipated. It is this ability to adjust, both to changing tastes and to the rigors of time, that remains the most prominent attribute of the hall.

But in aesthetics as well, Philharmonic Hall is a pleasant contribution. The beige travertine columns of its exterior will command the Lincoln center plaza with a classic sort of simplicity that is comforting for New York. Eventually it will be faced by the New York State Theater and the Metropolitan Opera House, both to be built in the similar style with columned facades. Only the Juliard School of Music which will stand to the rear of the Philharmonic will offend the basic scheme and even that offense is not a particularly serious one.

The interior of Philharmonic Hall is divided into a lower and an upper lobby and the concert hall proper. The upper lobby will be dominated by the as yet incomplete "Orpheus and Apollo," a pair of huge, free-form sculptures of gold Munz metal. Designed by Richard Lippold, who also produced the "World Tree" of Harkness Commons, "Orpheus and Apollo" will be visible from the plaza outside and hopefully will establish a sense of immediate excitement both outside and in.

The concert hall itself has an encouraging feeling of intimacy despite the fact that its capacity approximately equals that of Boston's Symphony Hall. The concert organ is concealed behind a transparent scrim but can be illuminated for concerts. Unfortunately, the scrim itself slightly resembles the inside of a packing crate and reveals the shadowy figures of stage hands moving about in the midst of performances. It perhaps could be successfully replaced.

Lincoln Center, when it finally reaches completion, will cost $142 million and represent the greatest single expenditure for the performing arts in history. While these are unpleasant terms in which to think of art, it is nonetheless encouraging to witness the concern and the interest which apparently motivated the contribution of such an amount for such a cause.

For 120 years the New York Philharmonic has been without a permanent home. It now has one and is apparently more than satisfied with it. The sound of the hall, at least, is great and luckily can become still greater.