Review: Philharmonic Debuts Back Flashiness With Substance

There’s often a bias against the idea of flashiness, especially in classical music circles, as if it must always be preceded by the word “empty.”

But not on Wednesday at David Geffen Hall, where the conductor Andrés Orozco-Estrada and the cellist Edgar Moreau were making their New York Philharmonic debuts. If anything, the word that accompanied their kind of flashiness was “fun.”

By offering plenty of buoyancy — and largely skirting grave weight — the programming communicated this conductor’s zealous pursuit of entertainment. It ran from a rousing take on Tchaikovsky’s “Romeo and Juliet” Overture-Fantasy to a graceful (and yes, occasionally flashy) Haydn Cello Concerto No. 1, then, after intermission, a truly aggressive reading of Bartok’s “Miraculous Mandarin” Suite and a boisterous finale in Enescu’s Romanian Rhapsody No. 1.

That’s an evening built to dazzle and entertain. But there was substance as well. From the outset of Tchaikovsky’s crowd-pleaser, Orozco-Estrada had the Philharmonic players in fine balance: Plucked strings had presence; entrances of flute or harp came across clearly; a roll of percussion heightened tension without calling too much early attention to itself.