Sat front row at the symphony...

I wonder if any of the people who disagree with my preference for close musical encounters have had enough experience comparing seats at various distances.  When an event was popular, I could never get a close audience seat.  From the 10th row or so, I would suffer through the first piece, realizing that my home system of Audiostatic 240 electrostatic speakers, excellent solid state electronics, my fast, neutral Denon 305 MC cartridge on Alphason tonearm and Goldmund Studio turntable offered much more musical detail and resolution than the 10th row.  On a detailed Mercury Living Presence recording with close recorded perspective, my audio system was about as revealing as the 1st or 2nd row, although the live sound was more natural with that detail.  But the most highly rated concert hall, the Musikverein in Vienna was a sonic dog from the 25th row, nothing but a bloated echo chamber.  The solo cello sounded like a 40 foot blown up character in a street fair.  As the most famous hall in the world, with New Years Day concerts broadcast worldwide, it was always nearly sold out, so I went back 3 times to hear the same orchestra, migrating closer each time.  Of course, my best seat was the 5th row, but I couldn't get closer.  The hall had a big advantage of having a stage that wasn't elevated, so the line of sight and sound was good.  You didn't have to be a giraffe to have a height advantage.  Admittedly, the 1st row in most halls is way below the stage, so the line of sight is poor from the 1st row.  (The Carnegie Hall stage is a full 4 ft high).  So the 5th row in Vienna was pretty good.  But I would have paid good money to perform on that stage and be thrilled with that crisp sound with neutral tonality that was hinted at from the 5th row.

The most revealing and exciting ensemble experience comes from a being in a small chamber group on the stage or a good room where everyone is sitting intimately close to each other.  Close contact like this minimizes the bouncing around reverberations which smear musical detail.  OK, there are some nonmusical extraneous sounds.  But the greatly increased musical detail predominates by far, and even the nonmusical sounds are part of the total sound of the instruments.  Anybody who prefers not to hear the instrument noises by sitting further away is also throwing away much of the musical overtones, like throwing out the baby with the bathwater.    

Many years ago, I was privileged to play string quartets sitting next to an esteemed violinist.  It was a soft slow movement from a Haydn quartet.  All of a sudden, he played an accented sforzando that wasn't loud at all, but the transient impact and his detailed control blew me away.  I will remember this for many years to come. At concerts listening to other great performers from the 1st row, the impact was markedly lost in my 1st row seat.  Any further back, forget about it--POLITE BOREDOM.  

One of my favorite violinists, Henryk Szeryng, I heard in concert many years ago from about 100 feet away.  I couldn't get closer.  I'm ashamed to admit that I fell asleep from the muddy sound I heard.  What a letdown by comparison to his exciting RCA recordings with fairly close microphone placement.

that orgasm story has not been verified, it's just clickbait

@viber6 

regarding Szeryng, or any violinist on recordings, I find it hard to listen to many violin recordings because the soloist is overmiked, imo.  The perspective is unnatural, in that they sound so loud compared to the rest of the Orchestra

@viber6 , my friend.....as always, your personal listening experiences are yours, and that is all....yours. Your system, as good as you feel it is, would not satisfy me, the way my system satisfies me, as I look for and appreciate other important characteristics than you. I accept that we are " different ", and I understand you play violin. This is all well and good, but you continue to feel, your perspective of the " listening thing ", is the correct thing. The fact that you are admitting to everyone here, that you would rather listen to your system, than to be in an audience of a fine hall, listening to a fine performance, tells me what I have stated many times before about you on another thread ( which is no longer here ). You have allowed your " audiophile life ", to put more emphasis on the " sound of instruments ", than the performance characteristics of the " playing of the instruments ", and the many musicians I personally know, listen the way I do, and enjoy similar things as I do. I am not suggesting right or wrong here, but as you try to defend yourself, as being " right ", as being a " more experienced listener ", has not changed since we have been communicating. Your perspectives and your experiences, are just that....yours. I respect you...you know that. And I accept all this from you. But what is good for you, is exactly that..... good for you. And me ? I always state what is good for me, and understand the " me ". Music listening, whether live, or through our systems, reaches us all in different ways. I am happy to say, I know what I like, as you know what you like. Some have not reached that plateau, and are still trying to figure that out. As always, I wish you my best. Your comrade in arms....MrD.

Mahler123 is correct that violin recordings with orchestra are just about always overmiked. Unfortunately, the live reality is that the 1 violin soloist is competing with at least 20 players in a small chamber orchestra in Mozart concertos, e.g. For big concertos like Brahms, the orchestra has 100 players, so the ratio is even worse. In addition, the violin SPL is fairly soft, and winds and brass are much louder. The orchestra is told to play softer in order to let the violin soloist be heard better, but it is still a losing battle for the soloist who is vastly overpowered. I have been frustrated by how the violinist often has to play louder than he wants in order to just be heard over the orchestra. This live experience is certainly natural, but so are rotten apples that taste bad and poison mushrooms that kill you. Piano concertos with orchestra have much better live balance, since the piano has very loud natural capability, and its unique percussive character enables much better natural balance with the orchestra. The bottom line for hearing violin concertos with orchestra live, is that only the first few rows let you hear the violin soloist’s details at reasonable volume, say 60 dB. Further away, at 40-50 dB, the live violin is certainly natural, but micro details and nuances are mostly missing, compared to the 1st row.

This is one reason I gravitate towards chamber music such as string quartets where there are only 4 string players and they are easy to balance. Recordings mike all the players equally, so these better balanced recordings are a much better likeness to live reality than violin or flute concertos with orchestra.

There are many examples of small orchestra pieces that have been performed by string quartet (SQ). Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusic is very popular for orchestra, but have you heard it played live or on recordings as a string quartet? I love my Budapest SQ recording from about 1960. In the SQ, the details and individuality of each player are showcased and the ensemble has great balance--the best of everything, and not too loud, which prevents fatigue. Whereas in a string orchestra, all the players in each section are blended together so you can’t hear the true greatness of each musician.

There are perverse examples of the other way around--string quartets arranged for orchestra. Mahler did this, but all he did was multiply the string quartet with many players on each part. Leonard Bernstein was a great artist conductor who made a recording of late Beethoven quartets on DG. I like his interpretations, but there is still more sensitivity and detail heard with almost any professional quartet playing these works.

I suggest to music lovers who love sound that they pursue whatever means is needed to get more knowledge and appreciation of the music. Live unamplified sound is the most natural, but there are compromises with that. Far away balcony sound has good balance, but there is so much detail missing compared to the close seats. Very close seats have much more detail but some balance is sacrificed. The gold standard on an intellectual level is the score, which contains details that almost nobody in the hall hears. A reasonable combination of good attributes is the 5th row. I make a personal choice to emphasize the details, which gets me closest to the score, which is why I get the most thrills from performing on stage. Another poster told of his thrills hearing Gidon Kremer the violinist from the 1st row, compared to his usual more distant seat.  So enjoy those violin and other recordings that are close miked with unnatural balance.  At least you get the details with the fullest appreciation of the sensitive nuances of the soloist.

If I get to age 100, I expect to be nearly deaf. I might still be able to perceive live natural balance from a distant seat, but it will be so faint as to not matter much. At age 105 with total deafness, I will seek musical pleasure from reading scores and "hearing" it in my mind. I believe this is possible, even when the hair cells in the ear cochlea are gone. Even now, I can elicit tears from my memory of great music I know, when it is silent in the room. Beethoven "heard" his late music when he was totally deaf, and these are among his great masterpieces. I fantasize that one day we will have media that electronically stimulate the auditory cortex of the brain, so we can play a recording direct to brain and hear it that way. Maybe some offspring of the producers of direct-to-disc.