Founded in 1936, relaunched in the 1970s and based at the National University of Mexico, the Orquesta Filarmónica de México UNAM, is the longest established orchestra in Mexico City. Jan Latham-Koenig has been its artistic director since 2011, and he is conducting the orchestra on its first visit to the UK.
The touring programme is certainly designed to include plenty of local colour. Four of the nine items are homegrown, while two more are by Spanish-speaking composers – a suite from Manuel de Falla’s The Three-Cornered Hat and a positively glutinous arrangement of Piazzolla’s Adiós Nonino. The rest is pretty pictorial, too – Jorge Federico Osorio is the soloist in Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, while Tasmin Little chips in with Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending and a Gustav Holst rarity A Song of the Night, which turns out to be a curious mix of an Elgar salon piece and the Bruch concerto.
There’s not much substance here, and while it is easy to understand why OFMUNAM did not want to build a programme around a big 19th-century symphony, its choice of Mexican repertory hardly rises above encore pieces. One of the most important Mexican composers, Carlos Chávez, who did write some impressive large-scale works, is represented by his Stokowski-like transcription of a Buxtehude Chaconne; Silvestre Revueltas, the country’s other truly significant 20th-century figure, is not represented at all. Arturo Márquez’s Danzón No 2 is an overlong exercise in faux dance music, while both his Conga del Fuego Nuevo and Moncayo’s Huapango have been well exposed in the UK thanks to Gustavo Dudamel and his Venezuelans, who play both pieces with so much more verve and panache than OFMUNAM brought to them here. This orchestra has a decent depth of string tone and some characterful brass, but on the evidence of this concert, what it lacks is rhythmic precision and a sense of flair. If you programme showpieces, you really need something to show off.
- At G Live, Guildford (0844 7701 797), on 7 July; at Anvil Arts, Basingstoke (01256 844244), on 8 July; and at Cadogan Hall, London (020-7730 4500), on 9 July.
