Steve Schwartz:

>effect.  I sang in the old Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center, which had
>a very bad rep....  Then came the performance, when people were actually
>in the seats.  The sound changed completely to something so muffled, we
>had trouble hearing ourselves on the stage.  I've also heard the new hall.
>The NY Phil sounded better than I ever heard them - indeed, finally
>world-class - but I have no idea what the stage acoustics are like.

When it was Philharmonic Hall, before the first makeover that got it
renamed Avery Fisher, the biggest complaint was that the musicians could
not hear one another on stage, even in rehearsal, I think.  After that
reconstruction, they could, though the hall was still not considered
very good.  It is still not considered first-rate, even after further
remodelling later, but I've lost track of when that was.  The last time I
was there was when Bernstein gave the American premiere of Britten's Suite
on English Folk Tunes: A Time There Was, the final movement of which
struck me then--and since--as extremely poignant, as the composer was dying
at the time.  The audience was rather stingy with its applause.

Jim Tobin