No Need for Beethoven to Roll Over Quite Yet : Music: Paul McCartney ventures into new territory with a brooding oratorio--a gamble that may only partially have paid off.

The Fab Four it emphatically wasn’t.

Paul McCartney, 49, returned to his hometown over the weekend to preside over the two world premiere performances of “Paul McCartney’s Liverpool Oratorio,” a 98-minute choral epic featuring the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, a 100-strong chorus, a boys choir and four operatic soloists of international renown, including soprano Kiri te Kanawa and U.S. tenor Jerry Hadley.

McCartney was once known here as the cute, baby-faced Beatles moptop who played bass guitar left-handed. Now, as if to emphasize how far his career has gravitated toward adult respectability, his oratorio premiered in the Anglican cathedral here before two crowds of more than 2,000 each.

The oratorio--in part a paean to his native city--is a serious, brooding work, quite bereft of the instantly memorable pop melodies that have permeated McCartney’s 3O-year career. It represented a gamble, and one that may only partially have paid off. While the audiences--mostly Liverpudlians--enthused about the work, some music critics mustered only faint praise.

Even so, McCartney disclosed plans for the orchestra to perform the oratorio in the United States next summer. A date for the Hollywood Bowl (where the Beatles played in 1964 and ‘65) has been “penciled in,” he said, along with a date in Cleveland. An album is also planned.

At a press conference in the city’s Philharmonic Hall before the first performance, McCartney said that when he was first approached by Carl Davis, who composed the oratorio with him and conducted the Friday and Saturday performances, he “wasn’t sure what an oratorio was.” The two men were commissioned by the orchestra to commemorate its 150th anniversary.

McCartney agreed that the first two of the oratorio’s eight movements were “roughly autobiographical.” The central character is a Liverpool boy named Shanty, a war baby born in 1942, whose main memories of school days were “sagging off” (skipping class).

Shanty becomes an Everyman figure who marries, becomes a father, encounters marriage setbacks, but finally becomes convinced of the joys of domesticity. A key section of the libretto reads: “What people wants is a family life / The strength of a home and a moat around the castle / Pull up the drawbridge. . . .”

Most of the people who crowded into the world’s fifth-largest cathedral Friday evening looked like regular Philharmonic concertgoers--smartly-dressed Liverpudlians, many of them about McCartney’s age. One teen-age boy wearing a black Beatles T-shirt stood out, as did some teen-age girls in ‘6Os minidresses. But overall, this was a crowd accustomed to classical music.

McCartney, wife Linda and a large crowd of relatives and friends occupied the front pews. Beatles record producer George Martin was present. Former Beatles George Harrison and Ringo Starr were not. Seats ranged from $24 to $80, though those in the cheapest seats had no direct view, and watched on large TV monitors.

For the duration of the oratorio, the audience was transported from the grim realities of life immediately outside--a city riddled with high unemployment and urban decay, still struggling from injurious policies implemented by a hard-left political group that until recently ruled the local government. Even now, Liverpool is in the grip of a city employees’ strike protesting redundancies; mountains of garbage have piled up in its streets.

The oratorio’s end was greeted by enthusiastic applause, and McCartney, looking ecstatically happy, hugged Davis and each soloist in turn before retiring with them to the Dean’s rooms to one side of the cathedral.

Afterward, on the cathedral steps, members of the audience were keen to share their views. Liverpool critics did their best to get behind their local hero. Rex Bawden of the Liverpool Daily Post found that the oratorio combined “memorably dramatic” moments with “passages of tedium.” But its “transparent honesty and sincerity” enabled one to “overlook its demerits.”

London-based critics also had reservations. Richard Morrison of the Times was disappointed that so “little of the fire, fun, sex and rebellion of the songwriter who shook the Cavern 30 years ago has percolated through the decades.” And Michael John White of the Independent on Sunday found the pace “slow, the texture thin. The orchestral writing is like background music. And the text is slight: It tries to get away with pop-song sentiments, and fails. That said, I enjoyed it.”

McCartney acknowledged beforehand that some critics might be less than enthusiastic at his move into different musical forms. Fans, he said, won’t.

At the press conference, McCartney also outlined some of his motivation for the work:

“I had half an eye on this (musical) direction when I wrote ‘Eleanor Rigby.’ I remember thinking--what am I going to do when I’m 30? That’s very old, 30. The way I approached this thing with Carl is similar to (Beatles producer) George Martin and I, the way we used to work.

“When we started writing, I fell into all my normal tricks--first verse, second verse, chorus. It’s a kind of formula that most people stick to. But Carl pointed out to me there didn’t have to be any formula. You could have a verse, go to a completely different tune or key. It’s very flexible, the long form. You are a lot more free to explore.”

After the oratorio’s first performance, Davis told The Times that working with McCartney had been “absolutely joyous.” He added that after he had suggested the basic eight-movement structure based on what he knew about McCarney’s life, McCartney had then “felt he wanted to drive the thing forward. Basically, he felt he wanted to dictate it and I was to be writing it down. But I think there was more to it than that. I’m a composer, and I’m supplying a lot of input.”

The two agreed that McCartney insisted on sitting with Davis while he laboriously arranged all the parts for the orchestra--and Davis tried in vain to teach McCartney to read and write music.

“Had he been able to, he wouldn’t have needed a collaborator. He wouldn’t have needed me,” Davis said. “But at least he was very familiar with and relaxed about articulating what he wanted.”