What happens when a concert venue changes?

For many of its 20 years the Lexington Symphony Orchestra has made its home in Cary Hall in the center of historic Lexington, Mass. The auditorium is a box with rising tiers meeting at right angles, which makes it look like the packing crate for Boston's City Hall. But the acoustics are gorgeous, allowing detailed clarity with a satisfying reverberation. Unfortunately the hall is now under renovation planned to last more than a year, so the Lexington Symphony had to seek another performance venue. Their 2014-2015 season will take place in the auditorium of Lexington High School.

Before the close of the final concert of last season, conductor Jonathan McPhee addressed the audience from the podium with the following narrative. When he was a conductor with the New York City Ballet the company moved from City Center on 55th Street to Lincoln Center on 63rd. Just eight blocks north; they lost 30% of their subscribers. It took several seasons to rebuild their subscription base. As music director for Boston Ballet McPhee saw the company move from the Wang Theatre to the Opera House, just four blocks north. They lost 30% of their subscribers. McPhee urged the Lexington audience to renew their subscriptions and reminded them that the high school had plenty of parking.

Fortunately on Saturday night the high school auditorium was mostly full for the first concert of the new season. The core of the program was several works by Arvo Pärt, a contemporary Estonian minimalist. Pärt's music strips away the traditions of the European symphonic style and explores the harmonic structure of sound itself. One of his major works, Tabula Rasa (blank slate), features a prepared piano, in this case meaning that screws have been placed at specific intervals along the piano strings. The screws disrupt the harmonic overtones of the strings, resulting in a sound very much like Tibetan bells.

Pärt writes silence as much as he writes sound to let the harmonic effects linger and leave an impression on the listener. These tides of sound induce a meditative surrender. Unfortunately the Lexington High School was not the right venue for this style. The auditorium is so acoustically dry that the music dropped dead as soon as it reached the ear. The silences were filled by the persistent whoosh of the facility's ventilation system.

Other items on the evening's program fared better. The Estonian Dance Suite by Eduard Tubin and Karelia Suite by Jean Sibelius have a more traditional style, and the denser scoring of continual music masked the deficiencies of the hall. Future concerts should be less problematic, with traditional works by Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky and Elgar. A movie-themed concert will take advantage of the high school's projection screen, but I'm sure the orchestra and most of the subscribers can't wait for the return home to Cary Hall.