One of the joys with a visiting orchestra is to experience new sonorities—to be swept richly downward, perhaps, to unanticipated string depths—to hear brass playing grainier or more golden than you thought possible in the hall—or wind passages lighter and more personal than you might have dreamed. More importantly, you come to sense the ensemble's psychology, as individual in its way as the conductor's. Listen to an orchestra like the Mariinsky, and you experience shivers of delight. How Russian it seems!