Music Review: Hispanic Classics Flavor A New York Debut

The first New York appearance by the State Symphony Orchestra of Mexico had all the makings of an occasion. Enrique Bátiz, an estimable maestro and the orchestra’s founder, conducted on Sunday afternoon at the Lehman Center for the Performing Arts in the Bronx. The program featured a promising mix of European, Mexican and American classics, and a noteworthy soloist, the Mexican guitarist Alfonso Moreno.

But even before a note had been played, the concert got off to an awkward start. Eva Bornstein, the executive director of the center, told the audience that the soul singer Brian McKnight and the salsa artist Tito Nieves had drawn a capacity crowd on Saturday night, but that this concert, by a prestigious orchestra, had done considerably less well.

“We don’t want to do just entertainment events here,” Ms. Bornstein said. “We want to do cultural programs as well.”

Despite low ticket prices and a comfortable hall easily accessible by road or mass transit, the house seemed half full. And you had to wonder whether low attendance played a role in a performance that failed to live up to its promise.

Bernstein’s “Candide” Overture, the opening work, was brisk and bawdy but seldom playful. Mr. Bátiz kept an efficient pace but seemed otherwise disengaged. The dry, flat acoustics exaggerated some untidy ensemble passages; high woodwinds, xylophone and glockenspiel popped out as if amplified. Even so, the orchestra endowed tuttis with a positively radiant glow.

Matters improved in “Concierto de Aranjuez,” by the Spanish composer Rodrigo, performed with a reduced orchestra. Mr. Moreno brought imagination and eloquence to his poetic account, and Mr. Bátiz provided sympathetic accompaniment. Aarón Reyes Torres, on English horn, played with beauty and refinement during a daringly slow account of the Adagio.

In the Mexican composer Carlos Chávez’s “Sinfonía India,” a taut, energetic score that draws heavily on the rhythms of early Stravinsky and the open-air harmonies of Copland, the players seemed to find their footing, generating real heat. Mr. Bátiz’s brawny, unsentimental interpretation of Sibelius’s Symphony No. 2 was not without interest, but a lack of precision made it seem more perfunctory than persuasive.

Generous (and genuine) audience response drew two encores: “Huapango” by José Pablo Moncayo, also from Mexico, and the Intermezzo from “La Boda de Luis Alonso,” a zarzuela by the Spanish composer Gerónimo Giménez. Would that the entire concert had been as securely and stylishly handled as these brash showpieces were.

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