MUSIC REVIEWS : Bowl Orchestra Ends Its Summer Season

Say goodby to the 1994 summer season at Hollywood Bowl, which was scheduled to end Sunday night with a third performance of its traditional fireworks-finale program.

Heard at the first run-through Friday, which turned out to be a protracted dress rehearsal for a Saturday-night live-television performance, this was a motley agenda variably performed, with long waiting periods between musical items.

John Mauceri, now completing his fourth season at the helm of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, and arguably the most charming classical-music emcee in the business (at least since the death of Leonard Bernstein), tried valiantly to bridge the gaps caused by the needs of broadcast-rehearsal, but it was a losing battle.

On the program, no fewer than 11 composers were represented, usually by snippets; until the closing “Fireworks Music” by Handel, those snippets were written by film composers. As usual, Mauceri did not deal in cliches but in the byways of Hollywood history.

The work of the justifiably admired Franz Waxman, an Oscar winner for “Sunset Boulevard,” who founded the Los Angeles Music Festival (1947-67) appeared three times: in the “Ride of the Cossacks” (from “Taras Bulba”), being repeated from Thursday; in an arrangement of Irving Berlin’s title song to “Sayonara,” and in the practically legendary “Carmen” Fantasy, written in 1947 for Jascha Heifetz.

Violinist Bruce Dukov, concertmaster of the Bowl Orchestra since its inception, was the virtuosic, resplendent-toned soloist in the Fantasy, sailing nonchalantly through these many technical hurdles, unraveling convoluted passage work with an effortless musicality.

The other high point on Friday--when 13,360 were in attendance; the Saturday night audience was sold out at 17,979--was the U.S. premiere of Waxman’s “Sunset Boulevard” Sonata for Orchestra, a gripping quarter-hour that showcased not only the composer’s melodic gifts and compositional accomplishment but also this orchestra’s smooth sense of ensemble.