That's the ticket--taking a seat behind the stage at Disney Hall.

The best Janet Shlesman could do was a concert of works by Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky performed by the unheralded Young Artists International, a group of young international musicians.

"I wouldn't have chosen this performance if I had known what it was," said Shlesman, an art teacher for the Beverly Hills Department of Parks and Recreation. "I'm not really into Russian composers. I thought it would be the L.A. Philharmonic playing."

Such are the travails of concertgoers these days looking for seats at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, where the venue's popularity has sent ticket sales for resident company Los Angeles Philharmonic through the roof.

Less than a month into the season, individual shows are selling out fast.

"The opening of this hall has been the biggest thing in the orchestra world I've ever seen," said Kris Sinclair, executive director of the Association of California Symphony Orchestras, of which the L.A. Philharmonic is the largest member. "Everyone wants to see the new hall and hear the acoustics."

The L.A. Phil has already sold 34,500 subscriptions this year, a 20 percent increase over last year's total 28,760. The Philharmonic attributes the gain to the popularity of the new hall, along with the greater number of performances and smaller capacity.

The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the Philharmonic's previous home, seated 3,085, but only held about 100 performances a year. Disney Hall seats 2,256 but will present 165 performances this season.

The Los Angeles Master Chorale, the other resident company at Disney Hall, has sold 952 subscriptions for its 2004-05 season, which starts in November. In last year's debut season at the hall it sold 1,000 subscriptions, 17 percent more than in its last year at the Chandler.

With subscribers locking in seats well in advance, single-show tickets have become much harder to come by. By Sept. 5, when the box office opened to non-subscribers for this season, 60 individual L.A. Phil shows were already sold out, said Johnathan Adair, director of marketing and communications for the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association. Last season, the Philharmonic presented 157 sold-out shows at Disney Hall, with subscribers accounted for 67 percent of those sales.

Still, persistent concertgoers can nail down single-concert tickets by taking advantage of weekly ticket releases, ticket swapping, no-shows and special stage arrangements.

The Philharmonic withholds 86 "choral bench" seats behind the orchestra that it sells at prices well below those of seats in the rest of the auditorium. Each Tuesday at noon, tickets go on sale for performances two weeks later. Choral bench tickets can be purchased for $15 at the box office and online or over the phone for a $10 service charge.

The catch: They sell out in about 30 minutes.

"Our audience became very trained to get those Tuesday tickets last year," Adair said. Seniors and students can also buy $10 "rush" tickets on the day of a concert two hours before curtain.

Subscribers willing to spend the money and commit to four to 10 concerts have an abundance of choices.

Milli Martinez, who purchased tickets to three Philharmonic series, as well as individual tickets for several holiday concerts and New Year's Eve with Cuban jazz ensemble Pink Martini, has more tickets than she can use.

"I sold some tickets to friends," said Martinez, an executive producer at KABC-TV (Channel 7). "People were dying to go last year, so it was easy to find people interested. And last year we gave away a few tickets as holiday gifts. We were still at the Disney Hall 22 times."

When Martinez was unable to attend some of the concerts, she swapped her tickets for other performances through the box office. Such exchanges are another way tickets to sold-out performances are freed up every day.

For some listeners, such as Shlesman, the show is secondary.

"A friend said we could get a good deal on these group tickets, so a bunch of us went," she said. "It was everybody's first time. We just wanted to see the hall."

RELATED ARTICLE: Ticket masters.

PRIME seats at sold-out Disney Concert Hall shows are easy enough to get--if you're willing to pay the price. Brokers are seeing brisk business for sold-out shows from Oct. 22 through the end of the season in late May, in many cases selling tickets for five times their face value. For example, Eddie's Tickets, Ticket Co., Barry's Tickets and other brokers offer tickets for the sold-out Nov. 11 performance by German bass-baritone Thomas Quasthoff for $210 to $250. Face value for those tickets range from $36 to $50. Tickets on sale through brokers for Handel's Messiah, on Dec. 17, go for $160 to $205, compared with a face value $36 to $71.

While prices remain high, brokers report that with some of the novelty off the concert hall, volume has not kept pace with last year. "Last year, sales were just enormous," said Eddie Espinosa, owner of Eddie's Tickets in Studio City. "All the shows sold out, so they had nowhere to go but the brokers. Sales are down about 30 percent from this time last year."

Ticket agents, who buy their stock in bulk through the box office, are still not hurting for business. They have hoarded hundreds of tickets for the two New Year's Eve performances of jazz band Pink Martini and are selling the best seats for as much as $500.--Matt Myerhoff