Like Simon Rattle, Sakari Oramo and Andris Nelsons before her, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla is already making Mahler’s symphonies a feature of her tenure as the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra’s music director. Her last concert of the current season at Symphony Hall was devoted to one of the most spectacular of them, the Second. As the packed auditorium for this Sunday-afternoon repeat performance confirmed, the Resurrection Symphony remains a huge box-office draw even now, when chances to hear it live are far more common than they were 20 years ago. Few will have gone home disappointed by this one.

Even so, some aspects of Gražinytė-Tyla’s interpretation suggested that it is still a work-in-progress. All the necessary excitement and grandeur are already unquestionably there – the cataclysmic climax in the first movement and the peroration of the finale demonstrated that, in a score the CBSO know so well, and in which the superb woodwind and brass never flinched or held back. But there were a few moments when this performance seemed a bit too contrived, when Gražinytė-Tyla’s determination to exploit the maximum possible dynamic range that Symphony Hall can sustain, and the sometimes exaggerated flexibility of her generally swift tempi, blurred its focus. The gigantic first movement’s development section became almost becalmed at one point, and the central scherzo seemed more episodic than usual.

Vocally, though, everything was immaculate. Mezzo Karen Cargill delivered the Urlicht song with sustained beauty of tone, and with the soprano Lucy Crowe soaring effortlessly above them, and the offstage brass perfectly integrated into the scheme of things, the superb chorus delivered the Klopstock ode with unshakeable assurance. In those final moments any earlier misgivings really had to be put aside.