As a high school student I once asked my mother, a teacher, why test scores on the SATs started at 200. Her answer: “They give you 200 points worth of credit for showing up and signing your name.” The same could be said about the “4” rating above. Everyone came to the sessions, but that’s about the only positive thing that remains to be said about these dreary performances. The orchestra sounds tinny and undernourished, the solo players (clarinets, trumpet) bored; dynamics are consistently underplayed; timbres are just wrong; conductor Dmitry Liss doesn’t seem to know the difference between suspended and crash cymbals; in the “Masque” section of the Bernstein, the celesta sounds hideous, which is no small achievement. Even the single tam-tam crash in the coda of the Gershwin goes for nought.
Of course, this wouldn’t matter so much if Ingrid Jacoby showed more sympathy for the music, but she’s also just, well, present, and then only barely. She has the notes but does little to characterize either work. Both the finale of the Gershwin and the jazzier sections of the Bernstein (especially the “Masque”) seldom have sounded so lame. As with the orchestra, Jacoby’s dynamic range runs the gamut from mezzo-piano to mezzo-forte, and her rhythms everywhere lack the necessary edge. Blandness rules. Even the sonics are strange, with odd balances, especially in the Bernstein (just where exactly is the orchestral piano?). You have been warned.
