MUSIC REVIEW : MANCINI’S CONCERT IS UNINSPIRED

Film composer Henry Mancini’s pops program with the Pacific Symphony over the weekend at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa showed his rare ability to write evocative sound-track music--and his inability or disinterest in doing much with it.

Themes rarely lasted longer than four measures; eight was the outside limit, and generally if anything was considered worth playing once, it was thought worth repeating at least two more times in a predictable sequence and maybe with one single major modulation.

As a conductor, Mancini did little but rely upon an elementary, but genial, one-arm beat, with an occasional floating assist from his other hand. But it hardly mattered: some of the music could be played on automatic pilot, and, in fact, whenever Mancini stepped down to be piano soloist, it was.

No wonder he acknowledged the instrumentalists so readily, spotlighting all the soloists--even the tubular bell player--as if they were members of a big jazz band. But maybe the limelight was a consolation prize for his handing out the really meaty solo parts to his own traveling, talented pickup band--drummer Jack Gilfoy, trumpeter Cecil Welch, saxophonist Don Mensa, guitarist Michael Clinco and bassist Jim Johnson.

Still, the orchestra played his jazzy or dreamy compositions with energy and conviction, and only once did the playing suggest that the composer’s keen sense of tone painting had gone awry: The trumpet tunes in “Arrival at the Vatican” from “The Thorn Birds” sounded more like an Anglican coronation anthem than a Roman service. But for sheep bleating, Mancini’s “It’s Shearing You’re Hearing” probably equaled the similar effects in Strauss’ “Don Quixote,” and Mancini’s bucolic “Thorn Birds Theme” surely rivaled anything folksy and outdoorsy written by George Butterworth.

For numbing impact, however, nothing Mancini composed compared with Miklos Rozsa’s repetitive “Parade of the Charioteers” from “Ben Hur.” And, sadly, only Mancini’s “Days of Wine and Roses” and “Moon River” proved as touching and lyrical as “When I Fall in Love” or “My Foolish Heart” in the conductor’s “Tribute to (composer) Victor Young.”

The concert on Friday also was marred by a persistent electronic hum from speakers suspended over the stage and amplification that cast a curiously disembodied sense over all the soloists. But none of this mattered to the enthusiastic audience, which brought Mancini back to encore the “Baby Elephant Walk.”