If people were subdued after the announcement of Andris Nelsons' departure from the helm of the CBSO in 2015, it certainly didn't show in this concert.

Who knows, perhaps in the elegant, understated and supremely musicianly presence of Nikolaj Znaider we might already have a candidate to fill Nelsons' shoes.

Overture, concerto, symphony: good old-fashioned programme-fodder, but in this case there was nothing staple about any of the offerings, beginning with a lively account of Mendelssohn's uncharacteristically storm and stress Ruy Blas Overture.

OK, orchestral placings were bizarre (violas on the edge stage-left where the cellos normally go), but the sound was full and rich, strings well-turned brass chording sonorous, and Znaider's beat reassuringly fluent.

And Znaider, also a world-class violinist, brought a lively response to the orchestral tutti in Chopin's Second Piano Concerto (it's about time we cast the hoary old chestnut about Chopin not being able to orchestrate into the compost-bin - just ask the bassoonist).

Ingrid Fliter was the committed soloist, with an instinctive feel for Chopin's textures, filigree never interfering with melodic line, hands well-balanced (though my spies tell me the piano was playing up), her empathy with Znaider's CBSO joyous.

The finale from Beethoven's Op.31 no.2 sonata made an appropriate encore, if encores are your bag.

We have heard so many accounts of Mahler's First Symphony here, where Symphony Hall can accommodate all its atmospheric offstage effects, but it would be difficult to recall one more cogent and lyrical than this one.

Strings were delicate in the less than blustering passages, piccolos shrilled as the best in the country (which they are), and the structure of this lumbering tone-poem (which it actually is) was patiently built by Znaider.

But what a joke is Mahler's requirement that all the horn-players should stand at the end, twiddling their breakfast-cereal cardboard music-rests to support their scores!

I don't know how they managed to play so resoundingly when their instincts would be to burst out laughing.