People don't come to the annual Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame and Opening Night concert expecting to hear, say, an entire symphony or a complete set by their favorite pop star. Or at least they shouldn't by now.
The Hall of Fame concert is supposed to be like a platter of musical hors doeuvres, an event that anticipates the diversity of the Bowl season ahead as best it can in a couple of hours. A little something for everyone, while accepting the risk of satisfying no one. Those in the lower boxes dine lavishly on culinary creations from Patina, while others picnic as usual. Fireworks polish off the evening. And its all for a good cause, a benefit for the Los Angeles Philharmonics Music Matters music-education programs.
Lately, one notices that there has been some narrowing of the range of the music; it doesn't fly off in as many directions as in the past. Also, the amount of talk from the stage was tightened Friday night, which made the presentation flow better.
But the streamlining went so far that Brahms's not-unreasonably-long Academic Festival Overture was edited to half its length. Normally, it takes 10 minutes and change to perform the piece; Thomas Wilkins and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra did it in five. The music sounded boomy and canned, like an ancient recording (the sound quality improved later on in the night).
The first of the Hall of Fame honorees, pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, sailed through Gershwin's delicious I Got Rhythm Variations overly genteel and not quite in sync with the orchestra at first but gradually working in some spiky glitter and friskiness. He then rattled off the finale from Ravels Piano Concerto in G with driving energy at a bracing, breakneck tempo. Neither piece was identified in the program or announced to the audience which did no one any good.
The next two new Hall of Famers, the Carpenters and Donna Summer, were essentially escapist bookends to the 1970s the former as a soothing, romantic antidote to the residual turbulence of the early-'70s, and the latter coming in near the end of the decade as the very symbol of the disco era.
The Hall of Fame concert is supposed to be like a platter of musical hors doeuvres, an event that anticipates the diversity of the Bowl season ahead as best it can in a couple of hours. A little something for everyone, while accepting the risk of satisfying no one. Those in the lower boxes dine lavishly on culinary creations from Patina, while others picnic as usual. Fireworks polish off the evening. And its all for a good cause, a benefit for the Los Angeles Philharmonics Music Matters music-education programs.
Lately, one notices that there has been some narrowing of the range of the music; it doesn't fly off in as many directions as in the past. Also, the amount of talk from the stage was tightened Friday night, which made the presentation flow better.
But the streamlining went so far that Brahms's not-unreasonably-long Academic Festival Overture was edited to half its length. Normally, it takes 10 minutes and change to perform the piece; Thomas Wilkins and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra did it in five. The music sounded boomy and canned, like an ancient recording (the sound quality improved later on in the night).
The first of the Hall of Fame honorees, pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, sailed through Gershwin's delicious I Got Rhythm Variations overly genteel and not quite in sync with the orchestra at first but gradually working in some spiky glitter and friskiness. He then rattled off the finale from Ravels Piano Concerto in G with driving energy at a bracing, breakneck tempo. Neither piece was identified in the program or announced to the audience which did no one any good.
The next two new Hall of Famers, the Carpenters and Donna Summer, were essentially escapist bookends to the 1970s the former as a soothing, romantic antidote to the residual turbulence of the early-'70s, and the latter coming in near the end of the decade as the very symbol of the disco era.
