Sat front row at the symphony...

The best position in the hall for any ensemble is the conductor on the podium, front stage center.  That is, for maximum detail which is the basis of tone and other characteristics of music.  As an experienced performer in orchestra, chamber groups, I know the facts.  Next best is the 1st row center.  By the 2nd row, there is already significant loss of high freq detail.  Remember that microphones are very close, so an accurate audio system will approximate the close sound of the mikes.  More distant seats further away than the 2nd row will give more spatiality, of course, but at the big sacrifice of vocal/instrumental detail, esp HF rolloff.

There was an ignorant early 80's review of great concert halls in TAS.  #1 was the Musikverein in Vienna.  The author said that any seat in that hall was great.  Well, I went to Vienna shortly after.  I sat in the 25th row--utter garbage reverberant mud.  The 12th row was much better, but nothing like the 3rd row.  

Get a good, natural recording of a piece you want to hear at a concert hall.  Go to a student concert where there will be plenty of open seats so you can try different distances.  Then go home and listen to your audio system which is hopefully accurate, and devoid of euphonic electronics and sources.  My accurate electrostatics and components have the detail of the 1st row, although the live 1st row still has the ultimate naturalness.  By the 3rd row, the beauty of the live sound is still wonderful, but HF brilliance is already significantly gone.

It's not about the sound.  How can any equipment compete emotionally with experiencing incredibly talented, devoted musicians playing music they love as a member of a rapt audience devoting their full attention to the performance.  Listening to your audio system is not comparable, period.

At Symphony Center in Chicago there is a semicircular "terrace" above and behind the orchestra, where the chorus sits when it is required.  Listening from that vantage point is a unique experience.  I describe it as like having an aural X-ray of the score.  Every detail of orchestration is distinct, powerful, and vivid.  Of course, it's not ideal when there's a soloist, whose back will be facing you.  But for an orchestral piece it's a worthwhile experience, much like a very well-mixed recording.

Every detail then how do you here the flutes and oboes along with the horn section that is 15feet in front of the back wall and projecting outward toward the conductor ?

The orchestra is in a huge shell-shaped proscenium.  Some years ago, an array of glass reflectors were suspended at the very top of this shell to improve  the balance of sound for the audience and to help the musicians hear each other.  I can attest to its success.  I can't fully account for the acoustic science of it, but it does work.  Flutes, horns, triangle, whatever...you can hear it in the terrace.  And out in the front of the house on the main floor, where I normally sit, I can hear the woodwinds better than I could in the olden days (for me, that would be the 1970s and '80s.)