Tuesday’s War Requiem was a welcome repeat of the much-acclaimed 50th anniversary performance given a year ago with the same forces in Coventry Cathedral. There were, however, two significant differences.

By placing the CBSO Youth and Children’s choruses up in the grand tier their lusty singing acquired a vibrant immediacy far removed from the conventional sound of angelic young voices.

And it was this empowering quality of Symphony Hall’s acoustic (so unlike Coventry’s vast echo chamber) that enabled the splendours of Britten’s score to be heard in such revealing detail.

But, as he always does, Andris Nelsons went beyond notes and textures – brilliantly observed and executed though they were – to reach the soul of the music.

The result was heart-wrenchingly emotional, often exciting, and always moving.

It was also an evening of many highlights: the CBSO Chorus’s barely audible opening ‘Requiem aeternam’, manic ‘quam olim Abrahae’ and uplifting Sanctus; a thrillingly projected ‘Liber scriptus’ and meltingly beautiful Lacrimosa from soprano Erin Wall; the superb enunciation and tonal subtlety of soloists Mark Padmore and Hanno Müller-Brachmann conveying the anguish and despair of Wilfred Owen’s poems; and a CBSO in glorious form throughout.

At the end, with enemies united in death (Let us sleep now) and the waves of In Paradisum having brought us to the final, magical ‘Requiescant in pace’, everything and everyone seemed frozen in time, an effect Nelsons was obviously keen to sustain – until someone with more enthusiasm than sensitivity broke the spell with premature applause.