Pop Music Reviews : Berlin Tribute at the Bowl a Flawed Effort

To live in 20th-Century America is to have been touched by the music of Irving Berlin. It is virtually unimaginable that even the most numb-eared citizen of this country could have avoided contact with a Berlin song at least once in the crucial life passages of friendship, passion, love or patriotism.

Friday night’s Hollywood Bowl “Tribute to Irving Berlin,” with Michael Feinstein, Rosemary Clooney, the L.A. Jazz Choir and the Los Angeles Philharmonic (with Paul Gemignani conducting), made an earnest, if flawed, effort to recall the most memorable of the 100-year-old composer’s songs.

The first half of the program worked beautifully, with singer-pianist Feinstein conjuring up his familiar magic on a colorful set of material ranging from the still-vigorous “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” (Berlin’s first hit, published in 1911) and “Puttin’ On the Ritz” to such lovely ballads as “Change Partners” and “Always.”

Feinstein’s amiable manner, sweet voice and heart-on-his-sleeve love for the material more than compensated for the feeble orchestrations performed by the Philharmonic. Both the Berlin songs and the Philharmonic string section deserved better treatment.

The program’s second half was even more problematic. Rosemary Clooney’s smooth contralto is a pleasant enough pop music voice, but her lyric interpretations seemed to detect no difference between the buoyancy of “It’s a Lovely Day Today” and the passions of “How Deep Is the Ocean.”

The L.A. Jazz Choir’s brief appearance brought an attractive harmonic variation to readings of “I Got the Sun in the Morning” and “The Song Is Ended,” but Clooney’s closing Christmas medley (featuring, of course, “White Christmas”) continued the program’s second-act deflation.

Ultimately, of course, none of the above irritants really mattered. Not even simplistic orchestrations or tepid singing could diminish the the real stars of the evening, the Berlin songs--those treasured words and melodies that have been the century’s film music of real life.