Music : Jarvi, Golabek in Bowl Beethoven Spectacular

Some words get overused. At Hollywood Bowl for the last 22 summers, spectacular has been worked over regularly and frequently. But some nights, the word is appropriate.

Friday, at the first of two performances of the sometimes annual Beethoven Spectacular, the fireworks show at the Bowl lived up to its advance billing.

Multicolored visions, kaleidoscopic lighting effects and splashes of lively images in the night sky reawakened one observer’s visual imagination.

No matter that the aural subject of this vivid show-for-the-eye was the composer’s embarrassing pastiche, “Wellington’s Victory.” It worked, nonetheless, in tandem with the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s careful treatment of this meretricious material. Michael Hackett staged the work, using costumed soldiers, swordsmen, townspeople and, of course, cannons.

And the preceding performances, also conducted by Neeme Jarvi in his fifth and final Bowl program of the summer, proved similarly circumspect.

Most jolly was Mona Golabek’s stylish and authoritative playing of the wonderful solo part in the composer’s “Choral” Fantasy, in which she, Jarvi and the Philharmonic were assisted by the Los Angeles Master Chorale. It’s a part that thrills pianists and mystifies everyone else, but genuine Beethoven nonetheless, and, in its way, terrifically grateful for the soloist. With her usual panache, Golabek made it live.

Violinist Mark Baranov was the other soloist of the evening, stepping out of his seat in the orchestra to play the Romance in G (on Saturday, Mark Kashper was scheduled to play the F-major Romance at this spot in the program), which he did with neatness and elegance, if some timidity. The evening, reportedly attended by 17,753 listeners, began with a bright run-through of the Third “Leonore” Overture.