And one last note: Goodbye to all that

Mahler’s Third Symphony, written in the last years of the 19th century as an epic farewell to Romanticism and a herald of Modernism, still stands as a masterpiece of intrepid hellos and sentimental goodbyes. The longest and most varied symphony in the standard repertory, it begins with eight horns, jubilant in unison, gleefully turning a Brahms tune into something new. Twenty years ago, those bounding horns called forth a new phenomenon on the international music scene when Esa-Pekka Salonen, an unknown Finnish conductor-composer in his early 20s, stepped up to a London podium as a last-minute substitution for Michael Tilson Thomas. Those horns ushered in another notable occasion in Salonen’s career: his first concert as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1992.

Mahler’s Third is also the symphony Salonen chose to conduct over the weekend for his final concerts with the Philharmonic at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Magnificently played, the horn opening had a zest that reminded me of the propulsive energy of movers who once packed my stuff, loaded the truck and drove it cross-country, all in three days. It was an urgent, exceptional performance that looked forward more than it did back.

I only wish it sounded better.

Inevitably musicians and concertgoers, preparing for the move next season to Walt Disney Concert Hall, retain an emotional attachment to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. The Chandler has meant a great deal to Los Angeles. In it, the orchestra grew enormously in quality and stature. When the Music Center opened in 1964, on my birthday, I could hardly wait to attend concerts there. A wide-eyed high school student, I was wowed by its poshness and delighted by the ushers’ Nehru jackets (in honor of the orchestra’s dashing, Indian-born music director, Zubin Mehta).

I have attended Philharmonic performances in the Chandler every season since, and it was there that I learned much of the orchestral repertory. But it has never been a good symphony hall. One gets used to it, learns to listen through the acoustical limitations, but when you see cellos sawing away and don’t hear them, as can happen from the orchestra seats, you are forced to choose between believing your eyes or your ears.

One obstacle for me Thursday was having heard, two weeks earlier, Mahler’s Third at the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, the new concert hall at Bard College in New York. It was designed by the Disney Hall team, architect Frank Gehry and acoustician Yasuhisa Toyota. The performance by the American Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leon Botstein, was rough-hewn compared with the elegant, confidently virtuosic one by the Philharmonic. Fisher has 900 seats, notably small for gargantuan Mahler. But the sonic impact was incredible.

At Bard, I felt as though I personally participated in Mahler’s amazing symphonic adventure, whereas the Chandler experience was more a secondhand, armchair appreciation. Take those opening horns. The American Symphony players may have been hanging on for dear life, but their sheer physical power practically lifted me out of my seat. I continued to feel connected to every musical event that followed for the next 95 minutes. The crystalline presence of Mahler’s instrumental details and the commanding might of the climaxes renewed the shock of what it must have been like to have heard these things for the very first time.

In the Chandler, the sound is much more generalized, deficient in color, clarity and bass. But its greatest disappointment is its limited ability to localize instruments in space. In the third movement, Mahler evokes his boyhood by re-creating the effect of the posthorn on the postal coach as it drove by in the distance on a summer’s night. He places the horn player off stage, but in the Chandler, James Wilt’s splendid solo seemed to float in an attractive but indistinct haze over the background.

The American Symphony’s posthorn, on the other hand, could be located exactly, and its startling immediacy allowed a listener to marvel at all the expressive character that Mahler wrote into the part. At the Chandler, basses and cellos merged into one vague sound; at Bard they were individuals. The fifth movement calls for women’s chorus and children’s chorus. Both were on stage at the Chandler. The women of the Los Angeles Master Chorale came through with moderate clarity; the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus did not. At Bard, the kids were in the balcony, their angelic song magically hovering over our heads. Even Michelle DeYoung’s darkly imposing mezzo-soprano barely filled the Chandler.

Nonetheless, Salonen’s performance will be fondly remembered. The cohesiveness and the vision he brought to it was unmistakable. Luminous violin solos from Martin Chalifour and the incisive trombone solos by Ralph Sauer contributed to the overall effectiveness of the performance. Salonen set the more agitated sections of the first movement on fire, and he maintained unerring control over the slow, hymn-like last movement.

But the Bard performance made a viscerally greater impression, particularly in the most upbeat moments of the first movement, when the music threatened to get away from the orchestra and the sound became so loud I thought it would break apart into distortion. It was like the roller-coaster moment when you are sure you are going to fall. But you don’t, and Fisher stayed the acoustic track as well.

Hall and music at those times become one, as exuberant architecture and daring acoustics incite musicians and illuminate the ear. That doesn’t happen at the Chandler. Its acoustics must be overcome. That the Philharmonic sounded as good as it did Thursday is a tribute to the players and Salonen.

The Philharmonic has two more weeks in the Chandler, and they will be led by Pierre Boulez, who does wonders with sound. Perhaps those concerts will cause me to shed a tear for a building in which I spent a good deal of my life. But I doubt it. The Chandler isn’t going anywhere, and I’m ready to cross the street.