MUSIC REVIEW; Meet the Beatles Less Reverentially

You haven't really heard the Beatles' song ''Can't Buy Me Love'' until you've heard the guitarist and singer John Pizzarelli lead his trio through an arrangement that pares away the vocal fat and slims it down into a skinny pop-blues vamp in the style of the Nat King Cole Trio's 1940's recordings.

The song, which Mr. Pizzarelli performed as an encore at his opening-night performance of a five-week engagement at the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel (59 West 44th Street in Manhattan) on Tuesday night, was one of several previews from a forthcoming RCA Victor album, ''John Pizzarelli Meets the Beatles.'' Where most musicians approach the Beatles catalogue with the reverential notion of treating them as ''classics'' (which too often means solemnly inflating their textures and interpreting the lyrics as oracles), Mr. Pizzarelli's minimalist approach brings out the songs' wonderfully offhand naturalness and fluency.

Phrases that are syncopated in the original recordings are swung more emphatically by the trio, while the singer's attitude of affectionate playfulness underlines the songs' spirit of pure, youthful frolic. A particular delight on Tuesday was Mr. Pizzarelli's spare, haunting ''You've Got to Hide Your Love Away,'' arranged for just voice and guitar. his Pizzarelli's diffident jazz crooning, which suggests Paul Simon filtered through Kenny Rankin, may never raise any roofs. But it has gained in precision and stability while remaining totally in sync with his quietly virtuosic guitar playing.

Like the Nat King Cole Trio, Mr. Pizzarelli's trio balances a taut, rhythmic intensity against an attitude of cool, intimate understatement. And on Tuesday, the singer's invaluable right-hand man, the pianist Ray Kennedy, contributed long, circular runs that recharged themselves on spiky Erroll Garnerish accents, adding an extra layer of panache to a show that was just about perfect but so relaxed it seemed almost tossed off.