Allan Kohrman:

>I agree with Len's assessment.  I am curious as to whether he or anyone
>else thinks there are other bad seats in Symphony Hall.

The dead seats are exactly where he said.  During the early and mid 1980's
I went to Symphony Hall nearly every week and stood on line for the cheap
subsidized seats, many of which were actually quite good.  You just had to
learn to ask for the best seats by row and number because the old guy who
doled them out would never admit that some were better than any others.

No one has mentioned Carnegie Hall or the Concertgebouw, that I've noticed,
among the other generally recognized great halls of the world.  The latter
I was in only once, with good seats; I was surprised to learn that the
hall was not more regularly booked up for musical events.  Carnegie Hall
was where I bought my first concert ticket--at age 15--and sat in the last
row of the top tier, where the sound left nothing to be desired.  (I still
remember the concert: Guido Cantelli conducting the NY Philharmonic in
Brahms' First Symphony, preceded by Rossini's Gazza Ladra Overture--an
overture being the usual concert opener in those days--and after the
intermission Ravel's Daphnis et Chloe Suite #2, and the first two of
Debussy Nocturnes.  No soloist.  The two French pieces haunted me for
years; I'd never heard music like that before.) I've often wondered why
the New York Philharmonic stuck with one of the worst major halls in the
world, at Lincoln Center, rather than cutting their losses and returning
to Carnegie.

Jim Tobin