TV REVIEW : Music Center Special: Zubin Mehta to the Max

At once a birthday party, an awards ceremony, a variety show and a cavalcade of network TV stars (each with a new platitude to deliver), the PBS “Music Center 25th Anniversary” extravaganza--tonight at 9 on Channels 28, 15 and 24--is arguably a Zubin Mehta special.

In this edited, 90-minute version of a Sept. 24 stage event, Mehta is back conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion--a situation that Bob Hope makes a special point of endorsing. Besides claiming the opening and closing performance segments of the telecast, Mehta is featured in two major sequences midway through (one of them with the Los Angeles Master Chorale).

As one of the event’s three designated “20th Century Masters of Arts,” Mehta introduces violin prodigy Midori, a winner of the $25,000 Dorothy B. Chandler Performing Arts Award. And, after conducting the orchestra for Midori’s performance, he even carries the heavy statuette offstage for her.

In comparison, the presenters--and winners--of the Chandler awards for theater and dance are hustled on and off. Introduced by Hal Prince, a collage of images from works by writer, director and designer Julie Taymor proves colorful but incoherent. Introduced by Suzanne Farrell, a segment devoted to choreographer Charles Moulton is mere tokenism: a few video clips from the PBS vaults dumped haphazardly onto the screen.

Dance is further minimized by the omission from the telecast of half the Joffrey Ballet performances given at the original gala--and Edward Stierle, the dancer re-creating Leonide Massine’s own solo in “Parade” isn’t even identified.

Music Center Opera offers two excerpts from its recent production of Kurt Weill’s “Mahagonny,” just as stodgy on the tube as it was on stage--and with both Gary Bachlund and Anna Steiger here sounding very forced indeed. In contrast, Justino Diaz sings powerfully in the “Te Deum” from Puccini’s “Tosca,” but Mehta’s faulty sense of the score’s architecture results in anticlimax.

Among the lighter diversions, Dale Kristien and Reese Holland bleat a duet from “The Phantom of the Opera,” Rosemary Clooney croons expertly--though with little feeling for lyrics here--and an ensemble representing Center Theatre Group performs an invigorating excerpt from Bill Cain’s “Stand Up Tragedy.” Don Weiner directed.