MUSIC REVIEW : Slimmed-Down Philharmonic Plays Pops at Bowl Benefit

When is the Los Angeles Philharmonic not the Los Angeles Philharmonic? That, and other conundrums for inquiring minds, was raised by an otherwise innocuous pops concert at Hollywood Bowl Monday evening.

The concert, “A Night of Great Movie Music,” was a benefit for Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute and the Hollywood Bowl--the Bowl in this case being the name for one pocket of the Philharmonic, devoted to capital projects.

The orchestra onstage was not the Los Angeles Philharmonic, however. It was only “Members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic,” though many members, to be sure. This being a night off for the orchestra, participation was optional, and thus that large and capable band could not be the Philharmonic, or so the hazy official logic went.

Most of the conducting assignments fell to David Newman, including the suites from Max Steiner’s “Gone With the Wind” and the Stothart-Arlen “Wizard of Oz” scores that closed the evening in tribute to 1939. The performances were big--with the amplification seemingly pumped up a notch over usual symphonic levels--and broadly gauged.

Another trio of film composers took the podium for examples of their own work. Maurice Jarre led a sweeping account of a generous sampling of “Lawrence of Arabia,” David Raksin conducted inevitable music from “Laura,” and Alan Silvestri--greeted by a young voice from the audience calling out ‘Daddy!’--guided a high-voltage account of “Back to the Future,” the lone exemplar of the flashy contemporary style a la John Williams.

Clips from “The Wizard of Oz,” “Marnie” (music by Bernard Herrmann) and “Day for Night” (music by Georges Delerue) accompanied the excerpts from their scores. The clip from “The Natural,” featuring Redford prominently, seemed the reason for programming the sample of Randy Newman’s score. Stills supported other items, including “Gone With the Wind.” Attendence: 12,936, most of whom seemed to have flash cameras they were not shy about using.