Finally, we know what he wants on those cutoffs in the first movement--full value. Also, he gave us some breaths. More erasing old breaths and adding new breaths--eventually this score is going to have holes worn through it from different interpretations. I've used it with three different conductors.
I really liked Ignat's explanations of Brahms' use of dolce and espressivo, which made a lot of sense. Probably no one will care except
yhlee, but his opinion is that in this piece, dolce is meant as a more "innocent" unaffected sound and espressivo as a marker of more intensity and color. Which totally matches the feel of the music when Brahms uses those words. 