Young Musicians Delightfully Mark Cinco de Mayo

One could make a satisfying afternoon out of music by Mexican composers, but the Young Musicians Foundation Debut Orchestra took a more generalized approach in its Cinco de Mayo celebration at the Wilshire-Ebell Theatre. Most of Sunday afternoon’s program revolved around a hodgepodge of pieces that incorporated, in jazzman Jelly Roll Morton’s words, the “Spanish tinge”--which made for a colorful menu, if not exactly a genuine Cinco de Mayo feast.

Foremost on the agenda, though, was not a Spanish-influenced piece but the world premiere of BMI competition winner Andrew Dionne’s “Renouncing Erebus,” which takes its premise--renouncing darkness--literally and often delightfully, using Kandinsky paintings as inspiration. Employing a reduced orchestra with splashy, delicate washes of vibraphone, Dionne resourcefully builds a whole movement upon a repeated scale, while basing another upon the fugues of various composers (Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge made an especially witty cameo).

YMF conductor Wilson Hermanto opened matters with Moncayo’s flavorful orchestral toccata “Huapango”--the only piece of Mexican origin on the program. Lalo’s “Symphonie Espagnole” was played in a shortened four-movement version, shorn of its Intermezzo and thus missing out on a good habanera tune. Co-concertmaster Yun (Wilson) Chu displayed a fine command of the sustained lyrical lines and adequate rhythm while Hermanto demonstrated his skill at closely following the tempo fluctuations of the soloist. Hermanto also made boisterous, transparently textured work of the second suite from Falla’s “The Three-Cornered Hat” and a mariachi-flavored Boston Pops-style encore.

Yet one noticed how the YMF players instantly took their playing to another level when the Pacific Symphony’s Carl St.Clair launched Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Capriccio Espagnole.” St.Clair’s undulating baton explicitly showed the orchestra what to do as he micromanaged the details of each phrase--and though their execution of the coda was not the neatest in the world, it had the kind of unspoiled enthusiasm and fire that often eludes jaded pro ensembles.