Music Reviews : Mexican Vocal Ensemble at UCLA

Credit the organizers of the “Mexico: A Work of Art” festival for not ignoring choral music. In one of five festival appearances, the Octeto Vocal Juan D. Tercero gave a tight and pertinent survey of 16th- and 20th-Century Mexican works Tuesday evening at Schoenberg Hall, UCLA.

Many of the glories of colonial-era Mexican cathedral music are becoming well-known, but the selections here of ensemble director Thusnelda Nieto were fresh and appealing. They included two Marian motets by Hernando Franco, a marvelously direct and inventive villancico by Juan Gutierrez de Padilla (“Las estrellas se rien”), two short anonymous Alleluias, “Ocho al Santisimo” by Juan Mathias, and a sassy Guineo by Gaspar Fernandez.

The contemporary set featured the world premiere of Federico Ibarra’s pert, quasi-folkloric “A una Dama que iba cubierta.” His much more substantial Romancillo, imaginatively voiced and distinctive in expressive dissonance, proved the high point, however.

A Sonatina by Guillermo Alvarez, the octet’s bass, offered a suave, if repressively textured, exercise in jazz chords. Nieto’s program also included the drab “Expresiones fugitivas” of Manuel de Elias, romantically fluid pieces by Moncayo and Galindo, and traditional songs.

Nieto led fluent performances, alert to all the implications of the texts. The singing was quite bright and often insecure in sound, but in the more relaxed ensemble efforts also rhythmically supple.

Nieto’s way with the 16th-Century repertory was stylistically unexceptional, though the octet’s consistent pitch problems at first suggested the application of some bizarre temperament. The intonation improved only slightly, but the vocal production grew more assured throughout the evening.