MUSIC AND DANCE REVIEWS : COVELLI CONDUCTS

If mere audience-pleasing is the name of the game, the symphonic pops format offers a conductor numerous tried-and-true choices. There’s the “Best of Broadway” approach, the “Salute to Hollywood,” “Great Tunes of Tchaikovsky,” “From Bach to the Beatles.”

Then there’s the scheme John Covelli seemed to adopt for his guest stint with the Glendale Symphony Saturday night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion: The Big Bang Theory. Don’t worry about cohesiveness, don’t sweat over musical substance--just make sure that nearly every selection ends with a loud crash.

How else to explain an agenda that blithely mixed the exoticism of Borodin’s “Polovtsian” Dances and Saint-Saens’ “Bacchanale” with the earthiness of Copland’s “Rodeo” and the dreaminess of Mozart’s “Elvira Madigan” Theme (not the whole piano concerto, of course, just the slow movement)? Other strange bedfellows included Richard Rodgers (“Victory at Sea”) and George Gershwin (“Rhapsody in Blue”).

For all his excitable podium mannerisms and competent keyboard contributions, Covelli, who heads the Binghamton (N.Y.) Symphony, couldn’t quite come up with the proper glue to hold this program together.

He did manage to draw out the full power of the orchestra--notably the much-used percussion section. In the Saint-Saens, particularly, the playing was impressive: clean and expertly balanced. And loud .

Subtlety? Expressiveness? Not a chance. In “Rhapsody in Blue,” for example, Covelli rushed through the score, blurring passages, glossing over the lyrical moments and pounding away throughout.