Music : Battle Sparkles in a Bowl of Corn

Pops with a twist is the house specialty at Hollywood Bowl. This weekend David Zinman and the Los Angeles Philharmonic visited Vienna and found . . . “Hee-Haw.”

On paper, the offering promised intriguing charm, with Kathleen Battle the soloist and Zinman leading the orchestra with a violin. But the fiddle proved simply an excuse for some Jack Benny gags, which in turn proved the most sophisticated part of the long, self-deprecating cornball show.

The Viennese are not above slapstick, as anyone who has seen their New Year’s Eve programs can attest. But this performance might well have been stickered with a warning label for the benefit of the innocents--surely some among the 11,158 Friday, 13,973 Saturday--who expected more sentiment than silliness from “An Evening in Old Vienna.”

In a way the thing was shrewdly planned, so that by the time the final Johann Strauss Jr. set rolled in--Zinman conducting “The Hunt Polka” with a rubber shotgun while rubber chickens dropped from above, Zinman conducting the “Thunder and Lighting Polka” in a raincoat while the stage lights flashed--expectations had been suitably lowered.

Illuminating the desperate hokeyness was Battle. She began with the noblest lullaby of all, Mozart’s “Ruhe sanft, mein holdes Leben,” bridging the Bowl distances with soft pliant lines, then turned to caressive, gentle seduction for “Batti, batti, o bel Masetto” while in streamed a host of very late arrivals.

Battle invested the “Laughing Song” from “Die Fledermaus” with demure wit and vocal sparkle, while the stagehand who would drop the rubber chickens in Strauss clambered through the speakers above her. She lavished shimmering sound in great cresting arches on “Vilia” from “The Merry Widow,” while Zinman and half the band fell far behind in the cadences.

The orchestra--or rather, a small part of it--had the best instrumental moments in Mozart’s “Serenata Notturna,” K. 239, with concertmaster Sidney Weiss leading the concertino part blithely. The rest of the program was played as the butt of Zinman’s stand-up monologues and costumed shtick.

And now, for something completely different. . . .