‘Mozart’ Is Fun but Not Innovative

“Loosely Mozart: The New Innovators of Classical Music” sounds like the name of an undergraduate course aimed at attracting young listeners away from pop. In fact, it’s the title of a PBS “Great Performances” special featuring singer-conductor Bobby McFerrin, pianists Chick Corea and Marcus Roberts, and a string trio consisting of Yo-Yo Ma, Mark O’Connor and Edgar Meyer. And it’s a title obviously designed to counter New York City’s long-running “Mostly Mozart” concert series.

What’s really significant about the label, however, is that it has almost nothing to do with the content of the show, which consists of a few remarks from McFerrin and three performances by players based in jazz, pop and classical. Entertaining? Yes. Innovative? Except for the show’s final segment, there is very little that can be considered what McFerrin describes in the opening as innovative.

Corea plays the Mozart D minor piano concerto (No. 20, K. 466) with McFerrin conducting. As on their current Sony recording of the work, it opens with a brief vocal improvisation by McFerrin, followed by a Corea musical impromptu before the concerto proper actually begins. Beyond Corea’s improvised cadenzas and McFerrin’s often overly dramatic conducting, however, the performance is simply brisk, workmanlike and straightforward.

The second segment, with Ma, O’Connor and Meyer, is based upon a loose, flowing work by O’Connor that dips in and out of American traditional folk idioms. Most of it is appealing and articulate, and Ma and Meyer, classical musicians, play with unusually relaxed rhythmic freedom.

But it remains for Marcus Roberts’ radical revision of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” to finally bring the program into focus. Bursting with improvisation (in some cases, a bit too much), swinging with jaunty, New Orleans panache, the performance is not so much innovative as it is revealing--a take on the “Rhapsody” that brings it back to its root sources.

The program has been photographed with great concern for detail, with some especially interesting overhead shots of Corea’s keyboard during the Mozart, and meticulous coverage of the many different soloists participating in the Gershwin performance.

* “Loosely Mozart: The New Innovators of Classical Music” airs on “Great Performances” at 8:45 tonight on KCET-TV Channel 28.