Austin Symphony Orchestra: Mexico’s 200/100
Dell Hall at the Long Center
Nov. 19
The year 2010 marks a double anniversary for Mexico: both 200 years of independence and 100 years since the Revolution. The latter also coincided with the birth of the Austin Symphony, which, as part of its centennial season, presented a full program of Mexican classical music this past weekend to honor the traditions of our neighbors to the south.
Following renditions of both the Mexican and U.S. national anthems, the concert began with Blas Galindo’s Sones de mariachi, a delightful, if not memorable, meld of three well-known mariachi tunes. The ensemble was at times cohesive and at times unfocused and muddy, making for a slightly underwhelming opener.
Next up was the night’s featured soloist, up-and-coming violinist Francisco Ladrón de Guevara-Finck, who took the stage to perform Manuel Ponce’s sprawling Violin Concerto. Written in 1943, late in Ponce’s life, the concerto is evidence of the international style that the composer developed in his multiple stints abroad, but decidedly Mexican in its inspiration.
It wasn’t an easy piece to love, with its dense, modal stretches and leaping rhythmic material that relied heavily on tiny, ambiguous melodic cells. In its intimate moments, however, as well as in the exciting final movement that evoked the festive chaos of street life, the piece shone through momentarily. The same can be said for Ladrón de Guevara-Finck’s performance. Though the soloist’s tremendous technique came through clearly in the concerto’s most exposed moments – particularly during the impressive coda, where Ladrón de Guevara-Finck seemed most at ease – the overall performance was oddly diminutive for a major solo debut. Ladrón de Guevara-Finck’s work was routinely overshadowed by the orchestra, which in other cases might point to balance issues or a lack of restraint. Here, though, I found myself consistently wanting more from both, and in many moments the soloist and ensemble seemed diffident.
After intermission, maestro Peter Bay introduced Silvestre Revueltas’ suite from the 1936 film Redes. The invigorating piece brought the orchestra to better form and featured a fantastic ASO brass section throughout, chiefly the ensemble’s powerful French horn section. I’d defy anyone to listen to Revueltas’ setting of “the fight” in part two of the suite and not hear a direct line of inspiration to Leonard Bernstein’s fight scenes in West Side Story, written decades later. The fight movement was followed by the melodramatic but ultimately satisfying “Return of the Fishermen With Their Dead Friend.”
Bay concluded the performance with Arturo Márquez’s iconic Danzón No. 2 and José Pablo Moncayo’s Huapango. The performance of the Huapango was lovely and delicate, its soulful duple vs. triple meters giving the ensemble a chance to let down its guard. Kudos to the graceful percussion section for driving the piece and to the winds for fantastic work throughout.
It was during Marquéz’s Danzón No. 2, though, that the symphony seemed finally to come alive. The performance was tight and balanced, a vigorous and electric salute to the multiple anniversaries being honored. That this was a departure from the overall quality of the night’s performance is unfortunate. With an exciting and varied centennial season ahead of them, let’s hope that this is just a bump in the road for one of Austin’s oldest performing arts organizations.
This article appears in November 26 • 2010.