Music : Mauceri and ‘The Gershwins’ at the Bowl

Normally, “Gershwin Night” at Hollywood Bowl is a time for trotting out over-familiar concert pieces--three in particular--plus star turns by vocalists from the pop and jazz worlds.

There was some of that Friday in “The Gershwins in Hollywood,” but also a lot more, a burst of enterprise not seen around here since ’79 and ‘81, when Michael Tilson Thomas was ransacking the archives for little-known Gershwin.

For example, John Mauceri and the new Hollywood Bowl Orchestra dusted off the original “Manhattan Rhapsody” that was written for the film “Delicious” and later expanded into the Second Rhapsody.

Admittedly, the original is a shorter, weaker, less cohesive piece, but almost all of the memorable ideas of the Second Rhapsody are right in place.

The soloist here, jazz pianist Dorothy Donegan, had some rough, out-of-sync moments at first, but matters improved as she went along--and she offered a rip-roaring encore of “The Man I Love” in her own jazz trio idiom.

There was the Final Sequence from “Shall We Dance,” which underneath the Hollywood veneer has some of the increased harmonic sophistication of later Gershwin scores. Mauceri and Tommy Krasker patched together a suite from “Damsel in Distress” that they call “An American in London,” which has some intriguing, little-known film cues mixed with the big tunes. Though a lot of this isn’t first-rate Gershwin, it is a first-rate idea to expand the limited Gershwin concert repertory.

While the orchestra had problems negotiating some of Mauceri’s more erratic tempo fluctuations in “An American in Paris,” the players were right on the money in the film sequences, playing “Walking the Dog” with a wonderfully impudent bounce. Already, they are producing a warm, elegant sound, and they seem far more comfortable with Gershwin’s jazz impulses than the Los Angeles Philharmonic ever did.

Alas, the sequences involving singers Gregory Hines and Patti Austin verged on chaos, with both singers frequently forgetting lyrics. Also, Mauceri insisted upon using ‘30s-era orchestrations of such tunes of “They All Laughed” and “Love Walked In,” and Austin could not deal well with their unyieldingly tight rhythms.

This long evening marked the summer-subscription-season debut of the Bowl Orchestra--and Mauceri immediately ingratiated himself with the 14,119 on hand with his slyly mischievous opening comments, timed perfectly to call attention to a nasty, intruding helicopter. Saturday attendance: 17,098.