Music : A Wry, Dry, Noisy ‘Tchaikovsky Spectacular’

Pow.

Zoom.

Crash.

Flash.

Thump.

Dazzle.

Rumble.

Roar.

Soar.

The stage shell at the Hollywood Bowl blushed in smoldering pink. Then came the fireworks--choreographed, for a blissful change, with genuine musical precision.

Fiery embers streaked in elegant crescendos across the dark clouds. A massive brass band from Cal State Long Beach--called, for some reason, the Wind Symphony--rose climactically on the forestage elevator. Finally--amid a neat barrage of bells, cannons and rockets--pinwheels of light twirled around the proscenium, cartoon warriors on horseback flashed on the horizon and a linear likeness of exotic onion domes rose at sky center.

A single topical word materialized beneath the Kremlinesque image: FREEDOM.

Gosh.

Sigh.

Wow.

Hooray.

This was “Tchaikovsky Spectacular ‘91” on Friday. It obviously was a spectacular with a difference.

Make that several differences.

The symphonic ensemble wasn’t the good old Los Angeles Philharmonic but the newly formed Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, a quasi-pickup pops collective playing its first so-called serious program. The able conductor was John Mauceri, a charming and irrepressible raconteur who, thank goodness, doesn’t seem particularly good at being serious. The generous program, in addition to the inevitable Greatest Hits, offered two pre-finale encores and one scheduled rarity.

Both “capacity” audiences went home happy this weekend. The official head count on Friday totalled 17,979. The number on Saturday was 17,979. Since the top ticket at Cahuenga Pass now fetches $67, the beleaguered Philharmonic management must have gone home happy too.

The Bowl Orchestra employs many of the best studio musicians in town. They play very well as individuals, and, with time and proper coaxing, could play with finesse as an ensemble. On this nicely amplified occasion, however, the strings sounded a bit fuzzy, the brass a bit raucous and the percussion a bit overenthusiastic.

Under Mauceri’s clear and sympathetic command, the orchestra concentrated on basics: bright and bold sonority, primitive rhythmic definition, straightforward propulsion. Under the circumstances, the character divertissements from “Swan Lake” sounded dangerously like smash-bang marches, and the hum-along Piano Concerto emerged clean, tough and square.

Since Vladimir Feltsman, the virtuoso soloist, seemed to be in the mood for muscular flash, the general stress on superficial sentiment may have been inadvertently advantageous. The concerto performance, in any case, made a stronger sartorial than musical statement. The pianist chose to sport flowing, white Nehru pajamas, which contrasted dramatically with the stuffy black tails favored by the maestro and the black tuxes modeled by the boys in the band.

After intermission, Mauceri mustered a little unexpected “Nutcracker” music as well as some surprise “Mozartiana” from romantic Moscow. The latter included a little Prayer that would have ended in the evening’s only pianissimo if the audience had not succumbed to premature applause.

The novelty of the night took the fascinating, rambling form of Tchaikovsky’s “Hamlet.” Mauceri conducted the tragic overture-fantasy with brooding theatricality that was compromised, perhaps, by his comic verbal introduction.

Finally, he embarked on the cataclysm everyone had been longing for: the mighty and not-so-solemn “1812” Overture.

Snap.

Crackle.

Pop.

Whoopee.