Of all great 20th-century operas, there's none that retains its dramatic power better in a concert performance than Bluebeard's Castle. Even monodramas such as Schoenberg's Erwartung and Poulenc's La Voix Humaine need their theatrical trappings more than Bartók's two-hander, in which the psychological battle between the protagonists, what that reveals and what that destroys, are vividly enough depicted in the score. We don't need to see the walls of the castle running with blood, the luxuriance of Bluebeard's garden or even the parade of his former wives as the doors are opened in turn; the orchestra provides all the illustration needed, with just as much precision as in any symphonic poem by Strauss.

Certainly the music is all that's needed in a performance as fine as the one that closed the CBSO's season at Symphony Hall, with the orchestra's principal guest conductor, Edward Gardner. The orchestral sound was sumptuous, overwhelmingly massive when required, and other than delaying Bluebeard and Judith's appearance on-stage until the recorded spoken prologue had finished, there was no attempt at any kind of concert-hall staging. Gábor Bretz and Michelle DeYoung stood and delivered superbly well. Bretz was not all the monstrous Bluebeard of myth, but a sadly resigned, rather touching figure, his mysterious nobility captured in the dark richness of his voice and its perfectly modulated diction; DeYoung, meanwhile, was passionate, impulsive, and naive rather than calculating.

For the great C major climax at the opening of the fifth door – the moment of the couple's greatest closeness – the extra brass were arrayed around the auditorium. In the first half of the concert, they had been lined up behind the rest of the orchestra for Janáček's Sinfonietta; it was a racy, celebratory performance, the perfect fizzy aperitif, for something as weighty and troubling as what followed.