Concert performances of four Wagner operas feature in Symphony Hall's 21st-anniversary programme. Die Meistersinger arrived in January, courtesy of the Royal Opera; a Mariinsky Parsifal is due next month, with Opera North's Walküre following in June, but the most intriguing of the quartet was always going to be this locally sourced Tristan und Isolde, with Andris Nelsons conducting the City of Birmingham Symphony.

Two years ago, Nelsons conducted a memorable Lohengrin in Symphony Hall, just before he made his Bayreuth debut with the same work. This was his first Tristan, though no one would have guessed it. The familiar Nelsons trademarks – irresistible surges and sweeps, luminous orchestral details, instinctive grasp of dramatic structure from the smallest to the largest scale – were all in evidence, without ever becoming an end in themselves, and the CBSO, it almost goes without saying, played wonderfully for him.

One of the highlights of Nelsons' Lohengrin had been Lioba Braun's Ortrud, and she was the star of this performance too, not in the role of Brangaene, in which first made her name in the 1990s, but as Isolde. Feisty and fierce in the first act, meltingly tender in the second, she sang the final act's Liebestod with mesmerising, rapt containment. The Tristan was Stephen Gould , who made up in stamina and power what he lacked in refinement, but plausibly scaled down his sound for the love duet. Christianne Stotijn's Brangaene was a little colourless, and too often wordless also, Matthew Best's King Marke was a model of sad dignity. Brett Polegato's Kurwenal was a real treat, too, his robust diatonic music always a breath of fresh air after the swooning chromaticism of the lovers.