BOSTON POPS PLAYS FOR SELLOUT CROWD AT BOWL

There are probably other symphony orchestras on this planet besides the Boston Pops with an idiomatic command of Broadway nostalgia, Hollywood space opera, big band jazz, parade ground marches and even the rock platitudes of “We Are the World.”

Maybe so, but the others weren’t in Hollywood Bowl on Wednesday, playing a “100th Birthday Season” concert to a capacity audience of 17,731. Their loss, poor devils.

Though John Williams provided rhythmically flabby leadership--effectively sharpening the beat only in the Dixieland transports of “South Rampart Street Parade” and a medley of songs associated with Judy Garland--his ensemble was truly a wonder. Officially the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra, it played with an absolute security of style that our own Philharmonic seldom achieves in its forays outside the classical mainstream.

With Joseph Scheer alternately soulful and virtuosic in the violin solos, Williams’ arrangement of excerpts from “Fiddler on the Roof” attained a fine blend of flashy rhetoric and sentimental warmth. Williams’ familiar scores for “E.T.” and “Star Wars” also, somehow, found their way onto the program--as did his grandiose showpiece “Pops on the March”--and all were played splendidly.

Alas, the most subdued, intimate selection Wednesday--”A Simple Song” from Bernstein’s “Mass”--fell victim to noise pollution from a circling LAPD helicopter nearby. Another police chopper had disrupted the Tuesday concert, too. Is there really a crime wave in Cahuenga Pass every night at 9?