Consistency is not in its songbook

Tuesday night, the Philadelphia Orchestra made its Walt Disney Concert Hall debut; Wednesday, its debut in the new Renee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall of Costa Mesa. These concerts were also the first Southern California appearances of the Fabulous -- at least when they want to be -- Philadelphians with their current music director, Christoph Eschenbach.

The first and no doubt the last.

I can tell you what occurred in these curiously inconsistent concerts, which did include a great performance of Brahms’ First Symphony. But I can’t tell you why. For that you’ll need to find a professional and a hundred or so couches. The psychology of this orchestra is beyond me.

The back story of Eschenbach’s hiring against the will of many players has long been public. A cosmopolitan artist with broad interests and a pianist-conductor with a laser-beam sense of rhythmic focus came to Philadelphia full of fresh ideas but under a cloud that never lifted. Freshness was not wanted. Last year he was told the players disapproved of him and that his contract would not be renewed after it expires next season.

There were few smiles on the Disney and Segerstrom stages. I was struck watching the orchestra not watch Eschenbach during Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony on Tuesday night. It was a study in avoiding eye contact. Heads were turned every which way -- one bass player awkwardly angled his neck toward the Disney audience behind him. I presume the band travels with a masseuse.

Eschenbach has an ear for snappy, crunchy textures. Once passed through the Christoph Crisper, music old or new -- Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Wagner, Berio -- can come out seeming just plucked from the vine. But Tchaikovsky’s Fifth was iceberg lettuce barely thawed from the freezer, with still a toxic tang of Freon.

Despite stunning moments, the slick, sleek, coldly virtuosic performance compared poorly with the spectacular recording the orchestra made of the symphony with Eschenbach two years ago; the impression was that the musicians were out to make themselves sound good and the conductor look bad.

Yet the next night in Segerstrom, the Philadelphians were altogether brilliant in Brahms, a display of musical heart and soul controlling every finger moved and breath taken. On very rare occasions, you can tell a performance is going to take off from the first chord. There is something in the voicing of instruments, a rapt combination of tension and attention. Ego gets subsumed into sound. The experience is almost mystical.

From whence such a performance, by a considerable degree the best sounding of anything I’ve heard in the new Segerstrom? From what depths could it have possibly emerged? There were few clues.

Both concerts featured Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante for winds and orchestra, dutifully dull.

In Segerstrom, the Mozart was substituted for orchestrated Schubert songs to have been sung by Matthias Goerne, who dropped out of part of the tour because of illness in his family. Segerstrom’s long evening began with Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony, written 100 years ago and here passing for newish music. Fifteen very good players appeared to sweat bullets.

Strangest of all, the orchestra sounded better in Segerstrom than in Disney. Possibly this had something to do with the Philadelphians’ eccentric attitude toward sound checks. They don’t do them, and Disney threw them. The lively acoustics must have inhibited the Mozart, given the degree to which the four wind soloists held back.

Meanwhile, Tchaikovsky in Disney turned into a free-for-all. The brass had a field day with a hall’s ability to handle a big sound, but the timpanist in this timpani-happy hall never found his sweet spot. The strings were brittle, but the horn and clarinet solos in the slow movement were wondrous.

Segerstrom, on the other hand, was like home away from home for the players. They got its sound right away, at least once past Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony. Russell Johnson, Segerstrom’s acoustician, also designed the orchestra’s recent hall, Verizon. Mozart, in Costa Mesa, had more presence, and Brahms’ symphony proved amazing, the famed, rich Philadelphia sound finally revived and modernized.

It is not any outsider’s role to meddle in relationships. But when an audience is called to witness a performance on the level of the Brahms First on Wednesday, I think we are entitled to add our two cents’ worth. Mine to these musicians is: Get over it. This is as good as it gets.

mark.swed@latimes.com