POP MUSIC REVIEW : Mannheim Steamroller Offers Flat Performance in Irvine

It’s a noble thing Mannheim Steamroller mastermind Chip Davis is doing, donating concert and merchandising proceeds from his current 20-city tour to aid the fire-damaged Yellowstone National Park. But his “The Music of Nature” program with the Pacific Symphony at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre on Saturday suggested that, even in music, steamrollers and forests just don’t mix.

Rather than evoke any of the mystery or wonder of the wilderness, the new-age outfit and 70-piece orchestra under Davis’ baton instead depicted nature as a series of cuddly animals hopping through a well-manicured habitat. Except for the addition of Sibelius’ “The Swan of Tuonela” and the Davis-composed “Interlude V,” the program of outdoors-inspired material duplicated that on the group’s “Yellowstone, the Music of Nature” album of last year.

Davis’ blocky conducting didn’t ravage selections from Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” and Respighi’s “The Pines of Rome,” but neither did it give them any life. That lassitude weighed heaviest on Sibelius’ 1893 “The Swan of Tuonela” tone poem, which revealed none of the somber beauty it has in other hands. The natural world expressed in these and a Davis orchestration of Debussy’s “Ballade” seemed a tame, ordered thing, under man’s sway.

While potentially tempestuous, “Cloud Burst,” from Grofe’s “Grand Canyon Suite,” was deflated by the orchestra’s disjointed performance. If orchestra members seemed disinterested, it’s understandable, since for much of the piece, their playing merely supplied a background for cheesy storm-and-fire sound and light effects. The “multimedia” occasion also proved that orchestras look every bit as foolish as metal bands do enshrouded in stage fog.

Davis’ own compositions, interspersed between the real ones, were typical new-age fare, with lots of dragging, sustain-pedaled piano arpeggios, gurgling synths and sampled critter sounds. His “Sunrise at Rhodes” proved an exception, with its martial drums and bombastic crescendos seemingly inspired by gladiator-movie soundtracks.

On the subject of films, what one presumes were intended as cricket sounds on “Nepenthe” were so loud and distorted in the mix that they sounded more like the giant radioactive ants in the ‘50s horror flick “Them.” The uneven sound mix also imparted a chalkboardlike character to the strings in places.

Much of the performance was accompanied by nature films and about 700 slides projected to screens on either side of the stage, though all were somewhat washed out by the stage lighting. They did help to add a proper travelogue setting to Davis’ tunes. Except for the disco-ish closer “Return to the Earth”--on which the tennis-shod conductor played trap drums--the Steamroller tracks were so jocularly uninspired that one kept expecting Bill Burrud’s travelogue-host voice to come over it. New-age music may have had its birth with Erik Satie, who early in this century introduced his “furniture music”--pleasant, incidental stuff intended as a background for living. But if so, Davis’ lifeless compositions might best be described as furniture music’s protective plastic covers.