Okay, now let me list some of the many positives of this performance and interpretation. The conductor is flawless in achieving balance and separation between the foreground, middle-ground, and background elements within this piece - bravo! All technical aspects of the performance are spot on. What most do not realise about conducting, is that you are directing traffic (musical data/information) +60 levels deep, and only rarely are you in a situation (especially these days) when all of those orbiting celestial bodies align in a perfect storm that gives rise to a lightning-in-a-bottle performance. My criticism, intended constructively, applies to such deep layers of subjective interpretation that, due to the nature of the hired-gun industry of the guest conductor, few conductors have the ability to address, let alone reach, in this 2 rehearsal and performance world. Kudos to the ASO and the conductor for perfectly nailing the major climax of this movement, but departing is as important as arriving, and after the climax, the "robotic" beating of tempo resumes, and my heart sank once again. Music is a language, if this ASO interpretation was spoken language, it would be words spoken mostly monotone and at a mostly uniform volume level. By way of example, Herbert Blomstedt with the SFSO gets much closer to the blood and guts humanity of this piece: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/l66df6hqp6jYqH0.html How? Via far greater intentional subtleties and nuances of dynamic and tempo shading throughout the movement - which is what the ASO performance would greatly benefit from. To use a metaphor, the bit-depth (resolution) of the SFSO interpretation is much higher (say, 32-bit floating-point, instead of ASO which is 16-bit fixed) meaning there is a far greater range between loudest and quietest, fastest and slowest - and that greater "dynamic range" in both tempo and dynamics is fully exploited by Blomstedt. The hired-gun, mercenary conductor economy works against working on minute, nuanced levels of subtly, since working with an orchestra for a long time is how the orchestra begins to understand you, when a conductor can have a meaningful conversation with an orchestra (as a single person) and be fully understood. This was/still is possible in Post-Soviet Eastern Europe, but even there it may be waning. It is mostly not possible in the New World - Germany, Austria, the rest of Central and Eastern Europe yes, but almost on accident in the US.

The norm back in 2010