Big Brother at the Philharmonic

"Hurry, Cicely, and finish your drink. There's the buzzer, and you know I don't want to miss the Eroica."

"Oh, fiddlesticks, Horton. Let's just sit here at the bar and watch it on the monitor. It seems so much more Bernsteiny, somehow, on TV."

A new dimension in concertgoing will unfold with the opening of Philharmonic Hall in Manhattan's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts next fall. Proving that art is not above imitating lower forms of life, the Philharmonic's architects have adopted a favorite gimmick of baseball and race-track clubhouses, enabling ticket holders to watch the main event on television from the convivial comfort of the bar. Furthermore, scarcely a corridor or a dressing room in the 2,612-seat concert hall will be out of range of a television camera. From the subterranean garage, where VIPs will disembark from limousines, to the rooftops overlooking the plaza, the whole place will be bugged for sight and sound.

Invisible Eyes. In Philharmonic Hall, cameras in more than 20 locations will be able to follow a concert in almost embarrassing detail for the nationwide TV audience. In the auditorium, a dozen cameras can be trained on the stage from built-in vantage points invisible to concertgoers. Many of these can zero in on the audience as well, to catch them in the act of applauding, fidgeting or snoozing. Another camera will be mounted directly above the center of the stage to permit overhead shots reminiscent of old Hollywood musicals. This camera can be aimed by remote control to focus on any group of instruments or on a closeup of Glenn Gould removing his mittens at the Steinway. Eight cameras outside the auditorium can pick up arriving audiences as they ascend the two grand staircases, buzz about the terrace galleries, eye one another in the promenade, or sip champagne in the cafe lounge. Backstage cameras will be ready to televise interviews in the Green Room or to invade individual dressing rooms.

To lend the ultimate air of TV reality, there will be a sponsor's booth commanding a view of the stage and auditorium, and equipped, of course, with television monitors so that the sponsor will feel right at home. It will also be mercifully soundproofed so that the sponsor may flick on his own commercials without disturbing the audience below. Facing the sponsor's booth is a tier of three picture-windowed control rooms on the other side of the hall. One is for recording, one is for radio, and one is for television.

Cable & Cannon. Not all the cameras in Philharmonic Hall are permanent installations. Many will be brought in by whatever network is covering a particular event. But the receptacles are there for plugging in the equipment wherever it is needed, and no longer will miles of cable snake down aisles to trip the unwary.

The closed-circuit television system will transmit the stage activities not only to the public bars and lobbies but also to backstage dressing rooms and the penthouse quarters of the Philharmonic's top managerial brass. For special events, such as children's concerts, a null TV screen will be lowered behind the stage, and when Leonard Bernstein says, "Now.

boys and girls, watch how the oboist's cheeks puff out when he does the next passage," there will be the oboist, bigger than life, in his pop-cheeked moment of glory.

Philharmonic Hall is scheduled for a grand opening Sept. 23. Two weeks ago technicians tested and acoustically tuned the hall. A twelve-gauge yachting cannon was fired from the stage; the orchestra played over and over a specially commissioned composition full of loud noises and sudden silences--Daniel Pinkham's Catacoustical Measures--to test echoes and reverberation periods. To simulate the presence of a live audience, seats were filled with pointy-headed fiber glass dummies eerily resembling hooded KKKlans-men, while such fine musical ears as Leonard Bernstein, Leopold Stokowski and Erich Leinsdorf prowled the corridors, listening critically as technicians shifted the position of acoustical panels suspended from the ceiling to correct defects. Final verdict: O.K. for sound.

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