Concerts: The Right Place for a Party

Every weekday morning for the past three years, New York Philharmonic Managing Director Carlos Moseley, en route to his office, has walked across a vast open tract of Central Park known as the Sheep Meadow. Decided Moseley: “This is the place for an enormous Philharmonic party.” A fine idea, orchestra officials agreed, music for the masses and all that. But will the people come? Last week, in the first of a series of 12 evening outdoor concerts, they got their answer. The people started arriving at noon, toting picnic baskets and blankets. By late afternoon, long processionals—young couples arm in arm, scruffy Villagers, knots of teen-agers in Bermuda shorts, families pushing baby carriages, businessmen with thermoses of martinis —were snaking down the myriad pathways emptying into the rolling green. When the orchestra finally sounded the first notes of the fanfare, there were 70,000 people in the Sheep Meadow —the largest audience for a musical event in the city’s history. No one could quite believe it. “I hoped for 20,000, maybe 30,000,” beamed Moseley, “but this is fantastic!” The musicians, besieged by teen-agers for their autographs, gasped “Who me?” then gleefully scribbled “Ringo Starr.” The program included the Act I Prelude to Wagner’s Die Meistersinger, and was capped by Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, with the 150-voice Manhattan Chorus. Said Soprano Ella Lee, awed by the thunderous reception: “It’s as if Beethoven wrote the Ninth Symphony just a few weeks ago.” Funds for the concerts were contrib uted by the Philharmonic ($70,000) and the Jos. Schlitz Brewing Co. ($50,000). The city donated a $110,000 “trailerized concert shell,” a 36-ton, 60-ft. by 40-ft. structure mounted on four trailer trucks. Unfolding like a massive Chinese puzzle, the shell’s white fiberglass panels and canopy can be set up in seven hours. During the five days following, the shell was trucked to Prospect Park in Brooklyn and Crocheron Park in Queens, where the orchestra drew crowds of 30,000 and 22,000 (in the rain) respectively. In total, the Philharmonic-on-wheels played to more people in three evenings than it does in three months at its elegant Lincoln Center quarters.