MUSIC REVIEW : Mexican Orchestra Makes Bowl Debut

Eleven years after its debut appearance at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the Mexico City Philharmonic returned Tuesday night to play in Hollywood Bowl. Even with an oddball, if respectable, conductor on its podium, the youngish orchestra still managed to reiterate its symphonic accomplishments, in a conservative program played before an audience reported to number 10,156 listeners.

Herrera de la Fuente is already the ensemble’s third music director in its 14-year history. From the evidence of his readings--distracting through his semaphoric gesturing and his own loud humming--of Rossini’s “Guillaume Tell” Overture, Beethoven’s C-minor Piano Concerto and Dvorak’s Eighth Symphony, his Philharmonic remains an orchestra that has achieved an admirable international standard through superior instrumentalism, firm balance between choirs and strong key soloists.

Unfortunately, an inconsistency in execution raised its irritating head in moments, even through the length of the Dvorak work, wherein the impressive band usually gave a splendid account of itself.

Here, momentary lapses of control and balance, and a mysterious loss of energy in the finale, threatened to spoil an otherwise brilliant and mellow performance. One educated guess would place the blame on Fuente’s idiosyncratic podium signals, which range unpredictably from frenzied to somnambulistic. At times, the orchestra seems to operate smoothly because it does not respond to what it sees on the podium.

At the beginning of the evening, Fuente & Co. produced a mostly solid and well-paced run-throug of the “William Tell” Overture. Before that, it played two national anthems efficiently.

Jorge Federico Osorio, a Mexico City-born pianist with international credits, at mid-program gave a rousing and stylish performance of Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto, one full of individual touches and informed by an attractive spontaneity. It also had an easy virtuosity in abundance, but even more: a tight grasp of the work’s emotional core.