Virtuoso conducting and immaculate orchestral playing, for sure, but there are drawbacks. Finlandia distils plenty of truculent defiance but there’s also a whiff of flashiness, as well as some over-succulent retouching of scoring that fails to convince (try from 6'42"). The Karelia Suite, too, is not free of fussy mannerism: the swaggering central processional of the Intermezzo acquires a baffling, almost comic rigidity; the Ballade is hampered by some exaggerated dynamics; and a comparable slickness blights the concluding ‘Alla marcia’, which should surely twinkle with a little more fun than it does here (and the extra cymbal clash at the very end really jars).

If anything, the performance of the Second Symphony (captured four weeks later in the Herkulessaal) is even more problematic. Both of Jansons’s previous versions (from Oslo and Amsterdam) left me cold and, sad to relate, so too does this pristine newcomer. For all the burnished timbre and silky polish of the Bavarian RSO, Jansons’s direction is calculated to a fault, the music-making evincing a knowing sophistication that tends to deflect one’s attention away from Sibelius’s heart-warming inspiration. He’s also not shy about adding a few questionable tweaks of his own (yes, that is a trombone bolstering the bassoon line from fig I or 5'06" in the development of the opening Allegretto).

Decidedly not to my taste, then, and, as far as the symphony is concerned, no match for a whole host of legendary analogue predecessors – Kajanus (1930), Koussevitzky (1935), BBC SO/Beecham (1954), Monteux (1959) and RPO/Barbirolli (1963) – let alone such recent sparky, illuminating and communicative offerings from the likes of Storgårds, Kamu and (Jansons’s own younger countryman and protégé) Andris Nelsons, who encourages his Bostonians to give of their fervent and golden-toned best (6/15).