Thick with the aroma of fresh popcorn, the air in Orchestra Hall invited great expectations Thursday night. The Minnesota Orchestra would perform the score of "The Wizard of Oz" while the great film played on a large screen for our viewing enjoyment. Two Januaries ago, the orchestra brilliantly pulled off a similar gambit with silent films. Because "The Wizard" has its own sound, however, the stakes were raised, and the experiment proved a disappointment.

Producer John Goberman, best known as the creator of "Live From Lincoln Center," separated the vocal and instrumental elements of the soundtrack to prepare the film. This allowed the actors to be heard onscreen while the orchestra re-created the underscoring and accompaniment for musical numbers.

Sadly, the miracle of modern editing technology was insufficient. The film often sounded horrible -- as though the voices were forced through a tin megaphone. Also, the orchestra overwhelmed sweet moments that define the film, such as Dorothy's goodbye to her three companions; and iconic signatures were somehow lost. How, for example, can you have the witch's guards marching about without hearing them sing "oh-ee-yah; ee-OH-ah?" Was this just a problem Thursday night, or a function of the process that split instrumental from vocal? Yikes.

The challenge in creating a program such as this is to transcend the routine experience of watching a film. Otherwise, why would you not stay home with Netflix, a warm couch and a bag of Orville Redenbacher?

When it came to the orchestra's work with Herbert Stothart's underscoring, we did hear rich textures that enhanced the music's key structural role in the drama. And the sound of the orchestra -- the precision, the tempos and accents -- was superb.

But this is a film, not simply an orchestral concert, and too often Osmo Vänskä's group competed with rather than complemented tender and subtle scenes. There's nothing delicate in "Ding Dong, the Witch Is Dead," but it was noteworthy for a rough start that took a full refrain to get back on track.

Charlie Chaplin's "Gold Rush" is up Sunday and next Thursday in the Sounds of Cinema festival. The orchestra did beautiful work with Chaplin's "City Lights" two years ago, and frankly this concept works better when unencumbered by mangled film sound. So we anticipate better things.

Graydon Royce • 612-673-7299