DAVOS, Switzerland — If it’s the last week in January, it’s the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum, held in the fairytale village of Davos, high up in the Swiss Alps. To this meeting come the great and the good (and the not so good): kings and queens, presidents and prime ministers. There’s also a smattering of arts types. For example, this year we had Emma Thompson, the actress; Yo-Yo Ma, the cellist, and two pop-world bigs: Peter Gabriel and, inevitably, Bono.

Ms. Thompson and Mr. Ma received the honor given by the World Economic Forum to arts types: the Crystal Award, which has been won by folks from Yehudi Menuhin to Lionel Richie. Ms. Thompson made a fantastically graceful, extemporaneous speech. Mr. Ma said he could not follow that with a speech of his own. So, after giving a speech anyway (a short one), he played his cello: played a Bach sarabande, from the Suite in C major.

Mr. Ma was at his most undisciplined: This was soupy, Romantic, swimming Bach, if it was Bach at all. It was a kind of musical goo — with hardly any spine, hardly any structure. A pianist would have blushed to play a Chopin nocturne that way. Mr. Ma, a phenomenal musician, is capable of much better than this, as we know. But the crowd loved his sarabande, regardless.

On Saturday night came the annual concert. The performers were a hometown — or home-country — band, the Bern Symphony Orchestra. Its conductor is Andrey Boreyko, the Russian who recently made his New York Philharmonic debut at Avery Fisher Hall. But he was not present on this occasion. Guest-conducting the BSO (!) was Eliahu Inbal, the Israeli-born maestro who leads La Fenice, the opera house in Venice.

And the soloist on this concert was a Japanese violinist with a glittering credential: She is the youngest ever to win the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. This happened in 1990, when she was 18 years old. In Davos, Akiko Suwanai played a staple of the Romantic repertoire: the Bruch Concerto. I might say, right off the bat, that she played it less Romantically than Yo-Yo Ma played his Bach sarabande.

Max Bruch wrote three violin concertos. But when we say “Bruch Concerto,” we can mean only one: No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26. The other two are virtually unknown.

Ms. Suwanai began well: slowly, deliberately, and authoritatively. She is a player of self-mastery — poised and rigorous. She also showed a wide, fairly rich sound. And yet the first movement was wanting. A stiltedness existed between soloist and orchestra. Rubato (that is, license with time) was not natural but stiff. Notes and phrases were placed, rather than free-flowing. And the orchestra was very, very ragged: For example, many of its entrances were botched.

In the slow movement, Ms. Suwanai did some sensitive playing — and she was logical. But she could have used far more bloom, in her sound. And the orchestra continued in its raggedness.

To begin the final movement, the orchestra was most unfortunate: loud and clumsy, when it should have been tingling and suspenseful. And Ms. Suwanai, when she entered, missed her first figure. Also, she was flat, in a performance whose problems did not really include intonation. But she played this last movement adequately. Her sound was tight — pinched — and some more style would have been nice. But she served Bruch adequately.

As for the orchestra, its sound, too, was very tight, very dry. I blame the hall, in part. I have heard six orchestras, I think, in Davos’s Congress Center. Not one of them has sounded what you would call first-rate.

The other work on Saturday night’s program was Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” — and, given what the Bern players had done in the concerto, one could not look forward to their handling of the “Pictures.” Indeed, much of the playing was very rough, very errant — almost amateur. I could cite any number of mistakes and agonies in solos. But let me mention something collective: One pizzicato sounded like an arpeggio on a harp.

But some BSO principals did themselves proud. And Maestro Inbal did himself very proud — the conducting was far better than the playing. The musicianship from the podium made up for a good deal of sloppiness in the orchestra. Interpretively, Mr. Inbal scarcely put a foot wrong. His choices in tempos, dynamics, and phrasing were near faultless. The shape of the work — from movement to movement — was just right.

And this conductor is a treat to watch. He is expressive in his gestures and gyrations, but not show-offy. He looks rather like a pudgy absent-minded professor, with strands of hair flying. And, during the “Pictures,” he sang, grunted, and otherwise sounded — too loudly, for those in the first rows.

An interesting thing happened in this performance: You could forget the playing of the orchestra and become absorbed in the “Pictures.” The execution, which remained shaky, became beside the point: The music was first and foremost. This is a considerable achievement, on the part of both conductor and orchestra, really. And Mr. Inbal’s musical maturity could be seen in the way he painted the last “Picture”: “The Great Gate of Kiev.” Unlike many conductors, he was not too slow. The music moved, breathed — making the gate properly grand, imposing, and satisfying.