Elizabeth Barnette tells it like it is — to which I’d add…

…  that after hearing the same Saturday performance with the BRSO at Carnegie Hall, someone should forceflly intervene whenever conductor Mariss Jansons comes within ten meters or so of a Brahms score.

Don’t get me wrong: Jansons can be damn impressive in Russian repertoire, and has also delivered stunning performances of underperformed works (the RCOLive SACD of the Poulenc Gloria and Honegger Third Symphony is a great example). But after hearing Jansons’s heavy-handed, turgid, sliced-and-diced Brahms at the same concert reviewed above, I suggest someone have a long talk with the maestro — and maybe loan him CDs of Furtwängler and Mackerras taking divergent but far more musical approaches to Brahms’s Symphony No.1.