At This Bowl Game, Most Everyone Knows the Score

Before the current attempt at detente between film music and the symphonic world, movie music was making its way into the Hollywood Bowl, in a natural marriage of site and sound. Here in Hollywood, after all, a great American tradition has been created, locally grown and globally known.

Suddenly, though, because of the increasing film-orchestral crossover phenomenon, the bar has been raised and we expect more out of a “filmharmonic” experience than the kind of stale musical popcorn served up at the Bowl. Famed film composer John Williams took the podium Friday (returning on Saturday) to conduct the Los Angeles Philharmonic before a large (9,684 strong), attentive and apparently happy crowd.

Too bad the program turned out to be such an unchallenging sampler plate of sound bites. Among them were Alfred Newman’s 20th Century Fox Fanfare--one of the best-known orchestral tidbits known to mankind--and Bernard Herrmann’s angst-ridden shower-scene music from “Psycho,” a wonderful snippet now reduced to token kitsch.

We got romantic flourish and fanfares by the bushel, including Miklos Rozsa’s chariot anthem from “Ben-Hur” and Erich Korngold’s music from “The Sea Hawk.”

It’s always great to hear the catchy Copland-scape of Elmer Bernstein’s “Magnificent Seven” theme, but the inclusion of music from Strauss’ “Also sprach Zarathustra,” popularized via Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” has its inherent dark side, as a symbol of both the way directors can tarnish classical music and also the perils of “temp” music (Alex North’s fine original score was scrapped for a soundtrack of existing classical music).

Closing the program was a suite of excerpts from Williams’ own work, including the lovely theme from the remake of “Sabrina,” with a fine violin solo from Bing Wang, and the stirring tune “Dry Your Tears, Afrika,” from “Amistad,” fortified by a children’s chorus led by Sally Stevens.

The Philharmonic was in fine sonic form under Williams’ clear, craftsman-like guidance. But after all the encores faded, we seemed to have only skimmed the surface of a tradition that deserves more respect, more depth and more risks.