TV REVIEWS : Marin Alsop Conducts Tribute to Bernstein

Packaged as “A Tribute to Leonard Bernstein From Lincoln Center,” this film of a live concert at Alice Tully Hall in 1991 (on Bravo tonight at 6:30 and 11:30) emerges more as a promo for “Bernstein protegee” Marin Alsop--how many people can make this claim?--than as a persuasive account of the composer’s music.

Capable, precise, tense and overwrought, Alsop conducts her dutiful 50-member Concordia Orchestra in three pop-influenced works--the Symphonic Dances from “West Side Story,” the would-be opera “Trouble in Tahiti” and three episodes from the ballet “On the Town.”

Composed in 1952, “Trouble,” a piece about an unhappy suburban couple, is more musical theater than opera, and the satire now seems pretty leaden. But it does contain a lovely tune and a central showpiece for the wife Dinah (ably sung and acted by Judy Kaye) that anticipate the rhythmic verve and lyricism that blossom in the 1957 “West Side Story.”

In this semi-staged version by son Arthur Bernstein, William Sharp makes as strong a case as he can, given the built-in bias against the husband, Sam. Amy Burton, Jeff Hairston-Smith and Andre Solomon-Glover intone mellifluous carping, pseudo-profundities as an Andrews Sisters-like chorus.

Between the musical selections are sandwiched ridiculously brief, general comments about Bernstein by Alsop, the composer’s musical theater collaborators Betty Comden and Adolph Green, and daughter Jamie Bernstein Thomas.