Munich is the closest big city to Salzburg — much closer than Vienna — so the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra didn’t have far to come. They played a concert on Friday night, under the baton of Mariss Jansons, the famed Latvian conductor.

Mr. Jansons heads both the BRSO and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam. Americans may know him particularly for his tenure with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, 1997 to 2004. Mr. Jansons is much in demand, and the world is right to demand him.

The main work on Friday night’s program was one of the “mainest” works of all: Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. What do you pair with this work? What do you put on the program with it? It is an old and hard question, and Mr. Jansons supplied a very good answer: the Symphony No. 3, “Liturgique,” of Arthur Honegger.

Honegger was a Swiss composer who lived from 1892 to 1955. He was once a very big deal — his music widely known — but, somehow, somewhere along the way, he fell out of favor. He deserves to be back in. He wrote five symphonies, the third of them just after World War II. Its purpose is to explore big questions of the human condition. The symphony is organized in three movements, all carrying Latin subtitles. The first of them is “dies irae”; the last is “dona nobis pacem.”

This is a work of sincerity and striving, and it may remind you of the good that music can accomplish (or reflect). by the way, Yevgeny Mravinsky — mentor of Mr. Jansons — made a fairly well-known recording of the “Liturgique” with his orchestra, the Leningrad Philharmonic.

The BRSO, under Mr. Jansons, played the symphony very well. They produced extraordinary beauty, in every section: strings, woodwinds, and brass. (i hope i haven’t left anyone out.) The brass were so impressive — unified, rich, and glowing — I said to myself, “Who do they think they are? The Berlin Philharmonic?”

Let me say again how beautifully this orchestra played. The beauty was so great, it almost contradicted the conflict and angst that Honegger includes in the piece. The piece, I should add, ends with a heavenly song — and the BRSO “sang” it in heavenly fashion.

Mr. Jansons conducted with his usual intelligence, care, and musicality. He is to be congratulated — thanked — for bringing this piece to Salzburg, which is to say, to international attention. It should not be consigned to an archive. The Bavarians’ rendering of Honegger’s Symphony no. 3 was one of the orchestral highlights of the festival season.

Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony was not so successful, I’m sorry to say. Mr. Jansons was at times correct and inspired; and at other times correct and uninspired. The Ninth came nowhere near to packing the punch it must.

The first movement was the best of the four. Mr. Jansons was sensible, but not boring. he was by-the-book, but not overly meticulous. it seemed we were in for a memorable ninth. but the Scherzo was oddly flat, oddly ordinary. it was without tension, without drive, without anything special at all. The music was altogether too polite. It was everyday, and that is not the Ninth.

The slow movement was nicely judged, with Mr. Jansons doing nothing wrong – nothing overtly so. And yet the movement was missing some of its grandeur, mystery, and transport. it lacked its ineffability — and what is this music without ineffability?

Now we come to the final movement, the choral movement. From the beginning, Mr. Jansons was in no mood to make big statements. I’m not sure he was quite content to let beethoven make big statements. The opening pages of the last movement were — I am repeating myself — oddly ordinary, oddly pedestrian. Self-restraint is one thing; an undue musical shyness is another.

The bass soloist, Thomas Quasthoff, missed his second note — high and sustained — but he got on track shortly thereafter. The tenor-soloist, Johanbotha, sounded heroic, as usual. but he was inexact in his rhythm, and uncertain in his intonation.

The soprano soloist was glorious — absolutely glorious. She was Krassimira Stoyanova, a bulgarian, and she showed a wondrous voice, filled with colors. She negotiated Beethoven’s high notes easily and excitingly. her every musical instinct was right. Seldom will you hear the soprano part in this symphony so well sung.

And the mezzo? Well, as i often say, you can’t really hear the mezzo in the Ninth, anyway — no matter who she is. For her, the work is barely worth putting the gown on for. in any case, the mezzo was Lioba braun, and she filled the bill. The Bavarian radio Chorus filled the bill, too.

Mariss Jansons did not conduct badly, mind you. He is incapable of that. but he conducted with too little inspiration, too little heart — and that is a kind of conducting badly, I suppose. Much of the final movement, and much of the symphony at large, was mechanical, soulless. The Ninth had its light under a bushel.

Yet it was good to hear this strange, mighty, and immortal work. What did Robert Graves says about Shakespeare? I paraphrase: “The thing about him is, he really is good.” And so is the Ninth Symphony, and so is Beethoven.