Mozart Orchestra Plays It a Bit Too Safe

It was one of those nice, comfortable evenings of music making when nothing went wrong, one could be happy about the cultural life of the city, but nothing achieved its potential either. Lucinda Carver was leading her Los Angeles Mozart Orchestra in works by Boccherini, Britten and Mozart on Saturday at the Wilshire-Ebell Theatre.

Carver made judicious choices in tempo, kept textures clear and clean and, unfortunately, favored pressure-less attacks and unincisive lines. She did not always get the interpretive phrasing she was indicating, however, and perhaps that was why one often felt a lack of imagination in the music.

Boccherini’s Symphony in D minor (“Della casa del diavolo”), for instance, rarely evoked the sinister or terrifying implications of its demonic subtitle, but it progressed buoyantly enough.

Jonathan Mack brought cool, polished and pale vocalism to Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, while James Thatcher provided his familiar masterly playing. From a seat in the balcony, however, much of Mack’s voice--and any text interpreting he did--tended to evaporate.

Carver and the orchestra offered moody and dramatic support.

In the Divertimento in D, K. 334, which she led from memory, the conductor presented genial, modest and light-textured Mozart. She put her attention mostly on the top line and left the lower half of the orchestra to chug along essentially on its own. It was an incomplete profile.

The composer’s detours into surprising emotional depths registered anyway, although they would have made more impact if, again, the string playing had been crisper and more incisive.