MUSIC REVIEW : Baja Orchestra Small but Polished

Russian musicians playing George Gershwin and Scott Joplin under a Mexican conductor in Tijuana’s Cultural Center--it may not be what George Bush envisioned when he invoked his “new world order,” but it surely is a very different ballgame. Eduardo Garcia Barrios, artistic director of the Baja California Orchestra, assembled Thursday night’s decidedly post-Cold War concert.

For Barrios’ 15-piece ensemble, however, the designation “orchestra” borders on hyperbole. When Barrios formed a similar group in Moscow while he was an intrepid conducting student, he prudently called it the Moscow Sinfonietta. But diminutives do not suit Barrios’ goals in Ensenada, where just a year ago he imported a cadre of Russian musicians to form the nucleus of the Baja California Orchestra.

Judging from Thursday’s performance, Barrios is an ebullient, gregarious conductor, and his charges give him a polished, professional product, although a string quintet surrounded by twice as many winds and percussion is a less-than-ideal sonic balance for most chamber orchestra literature.

Hearing Russian pianist Farizat Chibirova play “Rapsodia en Azul” (“Rhapsody in Blue”) proved to be anything but a routine, freeze-dried reconstruction of Gershwin’s classic blues homage. Chibirova alternately swooned and thundered, indulging Scriabinesque chiaroscuros and unexpected dramatic hesitations. Her approach fell somewhere between playful and willful, but it was technically accomplished and never dull. Barrios’ bright tempos gave the piece a lithe urgency that proved equally refreshing.

Barrios led a similarly upbeat reading to a suite of five Joplin rags, presumably from the composer’s “Red-Back Book.” (The scant program notes gave only the conductor’s biography.) Although the young Mexican maestro tended to dance and mime his instructions more than the typical conductor, his directing was replete with detail and nuance.

Two of Claude Bolling’s third stream trio sonatas completed the summery pops program. Concertmaster Igor Chechko treated Bolling’s Jazz Suite for Violin as a virtuoso showpiece, and if he lost some of the jazz inflection in the onslaught of brilliant figuration, it was a small price to pay for such vibrant, assured playing. Pianist Irina Chechko, his wife, provided equally brilliant, stylish accompaniment. She also assisted Vladimir Fateyev in Bolling’s Jazz Suite for Flute, but Fateyev’s light, airy approach missed the work’s panache and passion.