Mahler’s Second, from a boombox

Successful and eventful as were the opening night galas at the Walt Disney Concert Hall last fall, the venue’s first real test came with the first program of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s regular season a week later. That was when Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted a vital, viscerally incisive performance of Mahler’s Second Symphony, a symphonic epic of life, death and resurrection that, in the acoustically immediate space, felt as though it took possession of a listener.

Thursday night, the Los Angeles Philharmonic attempted to repeat history. After two weeks of concerts under the Hollywood Bowl’s new shell -- evenings that included orchestral pops concerts, rock bands and a staging of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” with Mendelssohn’s incidental music -- Salonen conducted Mahler’s Second once more, this time for the first proper test of the shell’s sound system.

The summer is young. So is the sound system. Amplifying Abba can’t be helpful practice for amplifying a large symphony orchestra, a chorus and two vocal soloists. This was the first time the Philharmonic was placed near the front of the stage and directly under the acoustical canopy, so there is surely more to learn about tricky sonic reflections in the new shell. It is too early to give up hope.

That said, the artificial orchestral sound heard on this occasion meant that this Mahler had little, if any, relationship to the memorable Disney experience.

For some, that may be beside the point. The Bowl brings its own pleasures. Thursday was an ideally balmy evening. The air was soft. Under the exquisite golden glow of fading light, violins buzzed and the cellos intensely cut their melodic swaths as they began Mahler’s imposing score.

My own experience with Mahler’s Second at the Bowl goes back to a performance of it given by the Utah Symphony under Maurice Abravanel in the ‘60s. A high school student, I sat in the dollar seats up high (although I sneaked down for the final movements). It was my first live Mahler Second. I thought it glorious and walked on clouds for days afterward.

This time, such a reaction for a newcomer, or for someone who still walks on clouds after Mahler’s Second, seemed out of the question, what with the tubby thump of cellos, squealing violins and screechy high winds. The lack of transparency or dimensionality from the loudspeakers so dulled the orchestral sound that the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s personality proved unrecognizable.

It’s a good thing the soloists couldn’t know how they sounded in the wide open spaces beyond the stage. Stephanie Blythe’s sumptuous mezzo-soprano effectively fills the largest concert halls. But that translated, in the fourth movement (a short, existential song, “Urlicht”), into echo-chamber booms that bounced around the amphitheater like a cartoon character inflated with helium.

The microphones grotesquely turned soprano Heidi Grant Murphy’s vibrato into loudly oscillating sound waves that threatened to stimulate deeply buried earthquake faults -- although it also provided a kind of physical aural massage that was not altogether unpleasant. The basses of the Los Angeles Master Chorale sounded, as here amplified, something like chanting Tibetan monks.

Video screens added to the aural confusion. Camera movements often seemed arbitrary, at times drawing attention to players concentrating on some minor inner part. What the screens might have been used for, but were not, was the text.

The brilliance and magnificence of Salonen’s Mahler Second in Disney Hall was in the details, as well as in his vital intellectualism and physical athleticism. There was a direct connection between idea and sound. At the Bowl, there was need for translation. The intermediary here was not sound but video. The cameras frequently lingered on the conductor and would have done well to linger longer, since they invariably missed his most exciting moments.

A tittering audience was delighted, however, that the screens did catch Salonen adjusting his suspenders between movements. And I fear that may wind up being a prominent image that some newcomers to Mahler took away from the performance. So much for walking on clouds.