LOCAL DEBUT OF WARSAW SINFONIA

Barely 3 years old, the Warsaw Sinfonia is already a distinguished and virtuosic orchestral ensemble.

Playing under its founder-conductor, the legendary Yehudi Menuhin, at its local debut, Thursday night in Ambassador Auditorium, the 44-member group displayed the substantial technical accomplishment and deep musicality that will eventually place it among the fine touring European orchestras.

Until then, its progress is a pleasure to observe. The program given at Ambassador, listing Bach’s E-major Violin Concerto (with Menuhin as soloist), Wagner’s “Siegfried Idyll,” a Rossini overture, Grazyna Bacewicz’s Concerto for Strings and Mendelssohn’s “Italian” Symphony, consisted of brilliant and touching, though sometimes unbalanced, performances of bracing aggressiveness. Youthfulness is the subtext in this ensemble’s playing.

Youthfulness is also a continuing trademark of Menuhin, at 70 lean, upright, mellow and vigorous, and a driving conductor whose quick tempos sometimes took breaths away--but always for reasons of musicality.

All these performances displayed wit and point, but none more than Menuhin’s bold run-through of Bacewicz’s Concerto for Strings (1948), a work so pungent, melodious and moderne, it seems to invite immediate rehearing.

But the rest of this agenda received similar treatment. Menuhin’s playing of the Bach concerto centered handsomely on the long lines of the slow movement, yet the outer ones showed tight purpose and clean playing from all. The Overture to “La Scala di Seta” emerged very nearly immaculate in execution. And the “Siegfried Idyll,” deeply felt, exquisitely laid out but never static, restored one’s faith in that oft-heard piece.