Elliot Goldenthal's "Fire Water Paper: A Vietnam Oratorio" is everything one might expect from a massive and ambitious piece by a young composer who does most of his work in Hollywood studios. It is slick, it is sometimes overblown, it is deeply derivative, it takes on a bigger subject than it can possibly address.

It is also, despite all, a pretty effective work on its own terms -- particularly in so spectacular a performance as the one Seiji Ozawa conducted Saturday afternoon at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, when the Boston Symphony Orchestra gave "Fire Water Paper" its Washington premiere.

The piece had its genesis when the gifted young California-based conductor Carl St. Clair read an article by Art Buchwald suggesting that the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was "crying out for music." Shortly thereafter, St. Clair commissioned Goldenthal to write an oratorio for the Pacific Symphony Orchestra in Orange County, Calif., which is now home to the largest Vietnamese population outside Vietnam. (It is St. Clair who leads the new recording of "Fire Water Paper" on Sony Classics.)

Goldenthal responded with an hour-long piece for large orchestra and chorus, children's choir, solo soprano and baritone. He built his text from a variety of sources: ancient Vietnamese poetry, Virgil, Tacitus, Cicero, Horace, a suicide letter from one of the several monks who immolated themselves to protest the war, nursery rhymes, code names for American military operations -- all over the bedrock of the Requiem Mass of the Roman Catholic Church, sung in Latin. The world premiere took place on April 26, 1995, on the 20th anniversary of the official conclusion of the Vietnam War.

"Fire Water Paper" is expertly made; as one music professional in attendance Saturday afternoon put it, Goldenthal "knows his stuff." The vocal writing is assured and responsive to the words (in Latin, French, Vietnamese and English). The music falls easily on the ear and makes a stirring first impression; nothing is much more visceral and exciting than a great orchestra and chorus in full thrall, and Goldenthal gives both of them a lot to do.

The score's derivations are obvious: Benjamin Britten's "War Requiem" for the overall form; Bartok or Kodaly for the cello cadenzas; Stravinsky, Orff, Mahler and "Satyagraha"-era Philip Glass in passing. But genuine innovators are few and far between; better, perhaps, in a piece of this sort, for a composer to take time-tested gestures and, through feeling and technical expertise, make them his own, rather than sailing off into yet another narrow avant-garde rivulet.

"Fire Water Paper" flows. It is linear. It has a beginning, a middle and an end. It never gets mired down in its allusions. It holds the listener's attention for an hour. These are not small accomplishments.

Still, there is a central problem: "Fire Water Paper" ultimately seems grossly insufficient to its purpose. Indeed, I'm not sure what that purpose was intended to be, other than to encourage some spurious "healing" process. I was never convinced that Goldenthal had any real ideas about the Vietnam War, save that it was tragic and that it is over. I was often reminded of one of those newsweekly articles on controversial subjects that strive so mightily to offend neither left nor right that they end up sweeping all of their readers into some weird, quasi-lobotomized DMZ. I learned nothing new about Vietnam from Goldenthal's piece; much more to the point, I felt nothing new about Vietnam.

One couldn't have asked for a finer performance, however, and that helped carry the afternoon. This is the sort of thing Ozawa does best -- the huge orchestra-chorus-soloists showpieces (other examples include the Mahler Symphony No. 8, Schoenberg's "Gurre-Lieder" and Richard Strauss's "Elektra"). To this taste, Ozawa is usually a middling interpreter, but he is a wonderful sonic engineer: The choruses came in where they were supposed to, the balances were carefully calibrated, the climaxes were just so.

Jayne West has a high, pure, strong and affecting soprano voice; I should call it "angelic" if it were not so filled with worldly emotion. James Maddalena sang his part with dignity and musicianship, although his voice is probably a size too small for this score. Jules Eskin did a masterly job with the strenuous and intricate cello cadenzas. The Tanglewood Festival Chorus and the New York Concert Singers: Project Youth Chorus made their own valuable contributions.

The program began with Max Bruch's lovely and sentimental Violin Concerto No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 26. The young Japanese violinist Akiko Suwanai offered a technically flawless performance. She has patrician taste, undoubted musicianship and absolute control of her instrument; it is not yet clear whether she has a distinct artistic personality as well. But she sure plays a mean fiddle.

Two last thoughts on "Fire Water Paper": The incorporation of the Latin Mass seemed rather too easy a solution to some vexing artistic problems. In no way am I questioning Goldenthal's religious convictions, nor am I suggesting there is no room for further settings of these great words. But in this particular case, I occasionally had the sense that the composer, in search of some extra gravitas, had simply grabbed out for something that all but defines high seriousness and then appropriated its solemnity for his own.

Finally, I'm not at all convinced that the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is "crying out for music," by Goldenthal or anybody else. On the contrary, it should be approached silently, humbly, in a grave and dignified confusion. It has its own music, made up of time, wind and old sorrow.