Young Conductor Takes Firm Control

Bundit Ungrangsee, conductor of the Young Musicians Foundation Debut Orchestra, exhibits an impressive assurance on the podium.

His directions are many and precise but are dispatched with a firm nonchalance, a kind of motion that says, “Here’s your cue, do with it what you will,” rather than the usual nervous and controlling motions of young conductors. Standing straight, his body language and facial expression are calm. It all comes out in the playing of the orchestra, which, with its poised delivery and gentle surfaces, belies its youth.

Ungrangsee, who recently took a Sibelius conducting master class in New York led in part by Esa-Pekka Salonen, turned to the composer’s Second Symphony to close the orchestra’s 43rd season on Sunday at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre. His reading unwound unhurriedly and clearly, the patchwork drama made cogent and all the details noted, including pianissimo dynamics. The orchestra responded with focused and polished playing (exceptions proved the rule). Indeed, perhaps only the score’s more violent aspects escaped these players.

Ungrangsee opened with a charming novelty, music by the king of Thailand. Like another world leader, his majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej is apparently a saxophone player and an avid composer as well. His “Near Dawn and Magic Beams” (1967) is an arrangement of some of his ideas, so his exact contribution is uncertain, but its scurrying strings, jazzy accents and sweeping lyricism (it sounded like a movie score) were engaging.

Xiaomu Fang contributed a steady, burnished-toned performance of Elgar’s Cello Concerto, which, though it didn’t quite plumb its passions, hurdled all its technical obstacles with finesse.