A sonic work in progress

Concerts by the Los Angeles Philharmonic began at the Hollywood Bowl in 1922 under primitive conditions. There was a funky temporary shell and audiences sat on benches or put blankets on the brush. But the country-like setting and what was said to be a superb natural acoustic made the venue catch on quickly. A few years and shells later, the Bowl had come to symbolize the good life in Southern California. The orchestral concerts seemed like they must have been pretty good too -- and the whole point of the enterprise.

Thursday morning, attending a rehearsal of John Adams’ “Grand Pianola Music,” I tried to imagine what it was like three-quarters of a century ago in the Cahuenga Pass. As has been widely reported, the Bowl has a new shell this summer and a lot of new amplification technology that has, thus far, proven problematic. Rehearsals are for the sound engineers just as much as they are for the musicians. But there were moments when the system was turned off and one could, for a minute or two, drift back through the decades.

The natural acoustics were said to have been seriously compromised when nearby housing developments and the construction of the Hollywood Freeway meant the leveling of some of the surrounding hillside. But I was surprised by how much could still be heard without amplification even from the top section. The greater issue seemed to be ambient noise from cars, machinery and aircraft. So ultimately, I was grateful to hear the amplification when it was turned back on.

During the rehearsal, Fred Vogler, the Bowl’s sound designer, offered a quick course in what he called “chasing the sound.” Most orchestral programs get a single morning rehearsal under conditions far different sonically than at the evening concert. Climate confuses matters, since sound travels differently under a hot morning sun than at night, when it is cool and more humid. The variations in atmospheric conditions as the sun goes down at the beginning of the concert make the acoustics an even more elusive moving target.

An empty Bowl during the day is far more sonically lively than a full one at night, when there are as many as 18,000 bodies absorbing sound. Settings on the mixing panel that work in the morning don’t work at night. Then there are the little things, which may or may not turn out to be negligible.

The guest conductor, Ilan Volkov, had been troubled by the sun at his Tuesday rehearsal, so a wooden screen was placed behind him. That caused sound from the two solo pianos in Adams’ piece, which were also shaded by the screen, to be reflected into the mikes at rehearsal differently than it would be during the performance.

The lanky and longhaired Vogler, an eager music lover in awe of Mahler who also enjoys the pops concerts that are an increasingly large part of his job, explained that he and his assistant are just learning the new equipment. The shell was finished at the last minute, and there was no time to test it in advance. He says that he convinced the Philharmonic to lease the speaker arrays and mixing panel, because equipment changes all the time, but that also makes his learning curve high.

At this point, he feels it’s too soon to know what the system can do, or even whether it is the best one for the Bowl. He does, though, say he is lucky to have gotten the speakers he did; they’re French and the company didn’t want to make them in white (a requirement for the shell) and agreed only at the last minute.

This tricky situation helps explain why what I heard during the rehearsal Thursday morning was, for the most part, quite acceptable, even exciting, and why what came out of the loudspeakers was so awful at the opening concert a month ago and has only slowly gotten better. But it only partially explains it.

As a sound chaser, Vogler can capture only the prey that is available to him. A rat is a rat and a peacock a peacock, no matter how good the net. There are still symphonies under the stars at the Bowl, but they are no longer the venue’s principal attraction and more like a nostalgic holdover. More pops events are programmed than Philharmonic concerts, which are no longer the Bowl’s main attraction. And with each passing year, the age-old orchestral favorites that are the bread and butter of the Philharmonic’s summer programming get a year older.

Contrast that with 1928, when the dapper British conductor and avant-garde specialist Eugene Goosens led the West Coast premiere of Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” at the Bowl. It was a sensation; some 20,000 attended. In 1933, the eight-week summer series was put in the hands of the nervy Nicolas Slonimsky, who used the occasion to premiere new music by Schoenberg, Ives, Varese and others. He went too far, but we’ve moved backward. Most of this music is still far too modern for the Bowl 70 years later.

The Adams, though, was great to hear Thursday, even though Volkov took himself too seriously. This is a good-natured Minimalist score that caused a furor when written 22 years ago, since it erupts into an irreverent big tune at the end. This is glitzy music, happy to be enhanced by a big sound system, and I thought the amplification could have been jacked up even more. The pianists, Joanne Pearce Martin and Gloria Cheng, dazzled in just the right way. Even the video screen close-ups, usually loathsome, verged on the enjoyable with music that comes from the video age.

The concert began with a repeat of Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto, with Andreas Haefliger as soloist, that had been on the Tuesday program. Instead of my usual seat, where natural sound and amplification are mixed in often unsettling ways and where you are likely to find lots of revelry in neighboring boxes, I moved to the very top of the Bowl. The higher you go, the more beautiful the setting. Forget this section on weekends if you are not in party mode, but the $1 seats attract devoted concertgoers for the Philharmonic.

Unfortunately, the Beethoven, for which the amplification was kept at a minimum, felt too distant for a listener to really connect with it (although that morning Vogler demonstrated that the speakers have enough juice to reach the upper atmosphere). It was lovely anyway, hearing Beethoven wafting in the distance, watching the hills darken and couples snuggle when the air began to chill.

That’s the Bowl, of course. You gain and lose something just about anywhere you sit. In the expensive pool boxes, you hear real sound but feel like you are sitting in a spaceship and miss the sensation of the outdoor setting. The rest rely on the sound system and hope for the best. Given all that is unpredictable in amplification outdoors, the results are likely to always be variable. But at least it is good to know that something better is possible and appears to be on the horizon.