One of the great orchestras of Europe – the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (Amsterdam) – came to Carnegie Hall, for a two-concert stand. Those concerts were Tuesday night and Wednesday night. Wednesday night – last night – the orchestra played Haydn’s “Surprise” Symphony and Strauss’s “Ein Heldenleben.” The night before, they had played but one piece: Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7, the “Leningrad.”

Now, you will recall that Tuesday was Valentine’s Day – and there could not be a less valentiney piece than the Shostakovich Seventh. (It was written during, and about, the Siege of Leningrad.) Well, perhaps Shostakovich’s death-soaked, terrifying Symphony No. 14 is less valentiney. But neither one exactly screams, “Be mine!”

The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra is no respecter of the calendar. I think we can say, “Good for it.” (The orchestra, I mean, not the calendar.)

The RCO was led by the Latvian conductor Mariss Jansons, who took over the reins in 2004. Remarkably, he is only the sixth chief conductor in the orchestra’s history, which began in 1888. Mr. Jansons is also the conductor of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, and he was in Pittsburgh from 1997 till he began in Amsterdam.

He very much has a Leningrad, or St. Petersburg, connection – or two. His father, the conductor Arvid Jansons, was deputy to the great maestro Yevgeny Mravinsky at the Leningrad Philharmonic. Mariss Jansons himself worked under Mravinsky, as an assistant. If we’re talking about the “Leningrad” Symphony, there was never a better conductor of it than Mravinsky.

But such things don’t necessarily – necessarily – transfer.

Shostakovich wrote the piece as part depiction, part rallying cry, and part just plain symphony. It had its American premiere in July 1942, when Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony Orchestra performed it. Shostakovich landed on the cover of Time magazine, as Marina Frolova-Walker pointed out in her excellent program notes earlier this week.

One of the questions facing a conductor of the “Leningrad” Symphony is, “How much savagery, and how much orchestral beauty? How much rawness, and how much polish?” A performance should not be too “Russian” – if I may speak in shorthand – and not be too “Western.” A balance must be struck. This symphony calls, in many spots, for what you might think of as an elegant savagery.

On Tuesday night, Mr. Jansons often achieved that. And yet, no matter what his background, a banality sometimes sneaked into his interpretation. The symphony ought to grip and throttle – certainly involve. This “Leningrad” was beautiful and correct, but not one to “shake your nerves and rattle your brain,” as the rock song says.

By decree of the government, the orchestra is a royal one, and they sounded royal indeed at the beginning of the piece: warm, burnished, confident. And their unison playing was absolutely together. Mr. Jansons had chosen a good tempo, none too dawdling. And he was infusing the orchestra with his energy. I remember one concert with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. He was so high-energy, some of us said, “He’s going to kill them.”

When the snare drum began its insistent rhythm – very, very quietly – the audience’s coughing pretty much covered up that drum. If that didn’t do it, a cell phone made sure to. In any event, Mr. Jansons led this music with pinpoint control – for a while. Thereafter, the orchestra went off the rails, just a bit.

Throughout this first movement – and throughout the symphony – the Concertgebouw’s solo players were amazingly good: the bassoonist, the oboist, the clarinetist (actually, more than one). The oboist played so beautifully, his instrument almost didn’t sound like an oboe. (My apologies to oboists all over.) I could keep naming outstanding soloists, but it would be easier to say that the Royal Concertgebouw is a damn fine orchestra.

Shostakovich’s second movement, a sort of scherzo, began with the right lilt and uncertainty. Can uncertainty be a quality – a desirable quality – in music? Sometimes, yes. The middle section of this movement was suitably wacky and chaotic. And when the third movement began, that chorale was appropriately harsh, but not too harsh.

And I might note that, when their time came, the cellos and double basses played their pizzicatos utterly together. It was a relief to know that this is possible. When you hear so much bad pizzicato playing from orchestras, week in, week out, you begin to think that maybe it’s not possible.

One more remark on a cell phone: At a very, very quiet point, one phone burst out with “The Stars and Stripes Forever.”That phone was so loud, at least in my section of the auditorium, the orchestra was absolutely inaudible. Sousa killed Shostakovich.

And how did the symphony end? With its grand, majestic, triumphant C major. For my taste, it could have been grander, more majestic, more triumphant. I did not feel the desired release. But Mr. Jansons cannot be judged to have failed.

Before I left the office for this concert, a colleague asked whether, after so many listenings, I could endure the “Leningrad” Symphony once more. I replied that, with a good performance, you can listen to anything, over and over. As I’ve said, Mr. Jansons did not provide a “Leningrad” to haunt the sleep, or memory. But he is a firstrate conductor, at the helm of a firstrate orchestra, and they all earned the ovation that Carnegie Hall’s Valentine’s Day audience gave them.