BOWL

The roar of drums split the evening air; the brassy strains of “The Star-
Spangled Banner” lit up the evening sky. At approximately 7:45 last Tuesday
evening a new season at the Hollywood Bowl sprang into life. From now until
September 21, the most generously planned of any urban music festival will be
going on right in our own backyard.Something else was new, as well, at this opening concert, since it also saw the
debut of a brand-new orchestra. The Hollywood Bowl Orchestra was formed last
winter; it has already released “Hollywood Dreams,” its first recording,
under its permanent conductor John Mauceri. Made up of freelance musicians
from the Los Angeles studio scene, the orchestra’s principal summer job will
be to take over some of the lighter programs that the Los Angeles Philharmonic
used to have to play. The benefit is, of course, twofold: the new orchestra
gets the work, and the parent orchestra gets more time to rehearse its more
serious symphonic programs.So far as any orchestra can be judged in its early weeks of existence,
performing into microphones in a vast open space, the new ensemble shows every
sign of filling a long-felt need hereabouts, and filling it handsomely.
Conductor Mauceri, led it through a fine razzle-dazzle program, in which the
orchestra got the chance to anticipate on its own, purely through its music-
making, the fireworks that were to come at program’s end.Expectedly from musicians used to playing on sound stages into microphones, the
orchestra’s tone is big and brassy. It is capable, as well, of some soft and
elegant sounds. An orchestral version of an unfamiliar Gershwin song,
“Soon,” brought quite a lot of fine, silky playing from the strings. Like
Andre Previn and a few other wise conductors, Mauceri has seated the orchestra
with the violas, not the cellos, on the outside. The arrangement greatly
lightens the string sound; even through microphones and loudspeakers, the
difference showed.The concert was subtitled “America the Beautiful,” and was planned as a
light-hearted family journey through familiar territory. Leonard Bernstein’s
“Candide” Overture (well-known to Mauceri, who had conducted the Broadway
revival of the show) was the most substantial work. The splendid young
baritone Bruce Hubbard, who sings “Ol’ Man River” on the famous complete
“Show Boat” recording, did so again, and beautifully. He also sang five of
Copland’s “Old American” song settings and another unknown Gershwin song
whose lyrics have only recently been rediscovered, a blues number to a tune
from “An American in Paris.” Even an uneventful saunter through the tall
corn can sometimes turn up unexpected treasures.Mauceri proved a genial host, with some easy-going humor and even a little
subversion (“please feel free to applaud any time you feel like it”) to put
the crowd at ease. At the end came three Sousa marches, with fireworks to
match: spectacular stuff, amazingly well coordinated to the downbeats in the
music. Glowing likenesses of Desert Storm heroes emerged from the smoke and
flame; at the end the pictorial epitome of America glowed high overhead. The
audience of 13,155 happy souls appeared to be having the time of their
respective lives, as well they should.