“Everyone who has heard this burly Latvian conduct the two orchestras with whom he has spent the most time (the Oslo Philharmonic and the Pittsburgh Symphony) has witnessed that rare alchemy whereby a good ensemble—as if galvanized by a collective will the players didn’t know they had—becomes greater than the sum of its parts. In this regard, Mr. Jansons’ only peer may be Sir Simon Rattle, who brought his provincial City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra to New York a few years ago and played a Mahler Third Symphony that had the man sitting in the box next to me—the New York Philharmonic’s then music director, Kurt Masur—glowering in disbelief at the spell cast by these nobodies from the English Midlands.”