MUSIC REVIEW : Orchestra Offers Sound Solution : Improvements in Segerstrom Hall Acoustics Can Be Seen and Heard in Concert

Kudos to Pacific Symphony music director Carl St. Clair and the orchestra management for tackling the problematic acoustics of Segerstrom Hall head on, with impressive solutions.

They recently met with Gerald Hyde, one of the original design team of acousticians for the building, to work out new ideas for seating of the musicians and to reconfigure the movable baffle panels of lights above the stage.

The string basses now have been set on risers and placed in a line along the back. Trumpets and trombones sit in front of them; horns have been grouped at the back of stage left.

The three banks of lights have been lowered and also staggered toward the back of the stage.

The results, as heard Wednesday in a program of Berlioz, Saint-Saens and Sibelius, led by guest conductor Sixten Ehrling, were pretty much what one experiences after seeing an old, familiar, fond painting after it has been cleaned and the original colors restored.

There is new transparency of texture, better balance between orchestral choirs, clearer distinction of players, evenness of string color throughout the vertical range, strong but uninsistent underpinning of support.

Right now, the new transparency can reveal weaknesses as much as it can enhance strengths, as was evident when Ehrling, 74, took command. Attacks could be tentative and imprecise, string lines could be flaccid even if string tone was fuller if not always richer.

The orchestra also may have been more impressive in explorations of pianissimos--especially in string tremolos--than in massed utterances or in maintaining sweep and tension. But it was hard not to feel that an important watershed in the history of the orchestra has been passed.

Moreover, the experiments in responding to the acoustics of the hall will continue, according to a spokesman for the orchestra--a good idea because the sound decay time still may be a bit short, resulting in dry patchiness.

Ehrling brought a respectful history of conducting Scandinavian repertory to Sibelius’ Second Symphony. His approach revealed a natural breadth and authority and fell midway between those who wrongly push the Finnish composer too far into the Tchaikovsky camp and others who hone in exclusively on the cool brilliant austerity of the northern climes.

Of the fine soloists, including Earle Dumler, English horn, cellist Steven Richards offered some particularly sensitive statements.

Pianist Ruth Laredo was the lyric and fluent soloist in Saint-Saens’ familiar Concerto No. 2, managing to evoke sometimes even the broad tensions and anticipations in Rachmaninoff concertos. But also at times she seemed boxed in, having to follow Ehrling, rather than the other way around.

Ehrling opened the concert with a low-voltage account of the Overture to Berlioz’s “Benvenuto Cellini.”