Royal Fireworks at the Hollywood Bowl

Fireworks explode over the recently rennovated Hollywood Bowl. Bordering the stage are large screens that project images of the conductor to the farthest reaches of the 18,000 seat amphitheatre

REVIEW: Los Angeles Philharmonic, Nicholas McGegan, conductor
Hollywood Bowl | September 2, 2004
Haydn, Symphony No. 94 in G Major ("Surprise")
Bach, Cello Concerto in A Major (Peter Stumpf, cello)
Handel, Music for the Royal Fireworks

The Los Angeles Philharmonic played late Baroque to early Classical period music over at the Hollywood Bowl on Thursday, including a pyrotechnical version of Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks. The playing was uniformly crisp and efficient, and would have been more noteworthy were it not for the fact that the Bowl is an extremely odd place to hear classical music. Symphonies and concertos were designed to be heard in purely acoustic environments - that is, you experience them without artificial amplification. Hearing the music processed through giant stereo speakers flattens it into a wall; the nuances and individual variances of tone and pitch amongst the instruments get reduced into a static mass of noise that arrives to the listener in a single package, unlike they would in a symphony hall.

But the Bowl provides an event, and it can be fun. Usually, though, there has to be some sort of a gimmick to make the evening worthwhile. Sometimes, the gimmick is a giant celebrity, whose presence acoustic or no can still provide a thrilling evening (this summer's main example being Renee Fleming's exquisite concert earlier this July). Thursday night's gimmick were those fireworks. And it was clear much of the audience was there for the fireworks, and not the music. One could barely hear the music over the "oohing" and "aahing" of the audience and the explosions of the fireworks shells.

So what you have then, is not necessarily a symphonic evening, but a charming, late summer night spent watching fireworks explode before the Hollywood Hills. The pretty, well-played classical music was more of an afterthought.