Cuarteto Majors in Latin American

Cuarteto Latinoamericano is getting reliable and predictable. Thank goodness. It keeps reminding us what a wealth of repertory there is in Latin American serious music.

While it’s a shame to pigeonhole these fine musicians from Mexico-- violinists Saul Bitran and Aron Bitran, violist Javier Montiel and cellist Alvaro Bitran (the Bitrans are brothers)--and demand they play only this repertory, inexplicably few others seem to be rallying behind their banner. So it remains their happy task to enlighten us, as they did again Wednesday at the Irvine Barclay Theatre to open the new Laguna Chamber Music Series sponsored by the Laguna Chamber Music Society and the Philharmonic Society of Orange County.

This time, however, they cast their net a little wider to draw in the Iran-born and America-adopted Reza Vali, with his ruminating and pungent “Folk Songs No. 11B” and Uruguay-born but Los Angeles-adopted Miguel del Aguila, whose mercurial “Presto II” was written for the musicians. It was an expansion of material from his second quartet.

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Not all the music was at the same high level. Turina’s “La oracion del torero,” surprisingly, bore rather lightly the programmatic weight of bullfighters praying for their lives before a fight.

But top-notch were Villa-Lobos’ typically heterogeneous Quartet No. 12 and, especially, Ginastera’s Quartet No. 1, with its haunting, mysterious third movement and its propulsive rhythms elsewhere.

Completing the program was Arturo Marquez’ “Homenaje a Gismonti,” one of those works in which dance evolves into song and returns to dance. The nine-minute piece was dedicated to the quartet, which gave the premiere in 1993.

As usual, the musicians played with vigor and commitment, and their work as an ensemble was exemplary.

For an encore, they played the tango “La Cumparsita” in a clever arrangement by Montiel, which relished spoofed its dance flavor. Incidentally, its recurring cadence was made indelible on once-young ears in the ‘50s pop song “Hernando’s Hideaway.”