Completely packed with a young-trending audience, Symphony Hall erupted into an unbridled lovefest including hoots and screams for piano-soloist Seong-Jin Cho and long upright cheers for Andris Nelsons. He acknowledged us by pointing to his own red rose and to those in the audience before flashing a heart gesture to the house while the entire orchestra stamped its feet in accord. Rachmanomania contributed to the fervor.

The master had conducted the BSO in his Isle of the Dead in 1909, soloed with the BSO in Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini under Koussevitzky here in 1937-38 and had taken the keyboard part in BSO performances of the Liszt Piano Concerto Number 1 in Brooklyn and Providence; he played his own concertos numbers one and two with this orchestra in Boston and out of town in five seasons.

Seong-Jin Cho looked almost impassive during his total domination of the Rhapsody, but sounded just as diabolically fast, clean, powerful, and romantic as Rachmaninoff himself did in recordings; he hurled thunderbolts, smoldered with passion, and carried off the challenging polyrhythms and broadly grand gestures with sovereign confidence. He gave the Dies Irae more of a scare than it gave him. He also showed comfort and restraint in accompanimental moments and in his interplay with members and sections of the orchestra. The strings, surging in a grand manner, carried us away with their sweep and melting blend, especially on the bestseller variation 18 (Rachmaninoff famously averred, “This one is for my agent.”). As this is a concertante work, many individual players made stunning contributions. The horns and trombones blasted the wrath of God. Flutist Elizabeth Klein, oboist Mark McEwen, and clarinetist Thomas Martin all deserved callouts for their pizzaz and musicality, as did their sections. I particularly remember how Richard Svoboda’s bassoon sinuously elucidated the Paganini Theme while the piano intoned the Dies Irae in block chords. The clarity of the exclamation points from the percussion and harp, also deserved notice.  By emphasizing how the 24 variations fall into fast, slow, fast sections, Nelsons drew the big architectural picture as well as balancing details carefully and letting loose with overwhelming tuttis. But the piece ends with a smile as Cho’s closed the deal with lightness and wit.

He encored with a delicate, if impersonal, take on Chopin’s Waltz No. 19 in A Minor Op. posth.

In the 1910-11 season alone, the BSO offered up Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2 in E Minor under Max Fiedler 17 times overall —in New York, Baltimore, Cambridge, Providence, Brooklyn, Hartford, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Buffalo—as well as Symphony Hall. Since then, its ubiquity has almost equaled the white whale. Early on, the marine mammal had been docked with unseemly cuts, but apparently the full, hour-long version now spouts everywhere.

To this seethingly provisioned apotheosis of sentimental Russian Romanticism, Nelsons drove a slower than average tempo in every movement, mixing clarity with unabashed sentimentality, apparently paying little heed to the metronome marking, which would have resulted in a 53- minute duration (according to Ivan Marsh). We surrendered to a full 60 minutes of cyclical luster.

Right at the beginning of the Largo introduction to the first movement, the low strings (cellos and double basses) growl out an ominous, 7-note theme. This stepwise motif is deeply inspired by the contours of Russian Orthodox chant.

Rather than leaving it behind, Rachmaninoff weaves variations of these exact seven notes into the DNA of the entire symphony. It provides the bedrock for the Allegro moderato, sneaks into the driving rhythm of the Scherzo, structures the underlying harmony of the famous Adagio, and is ultimately resolved during the triumphant synthesis of the Allegro vivace finale.   Thomas May

Throughout, the string section sounded like an old fashioned Russian Orthodox Chorus though with women mixed in through the offices of the shimmering, tremultating, and portamento-rich violins. (Decades ago, I had avoided sitting up close, because I was distracted by hearing individual violinists. This time, somewhat un-ideally placed in row G, I experienced the section as a single voice. Are my ears declining or is the ensemble now more perfect?)  The cellos and basses, though they also often described melodic arcs, also pizzed unanimously as Nelsons seemed to pluck the entire sections with his clear baton.

The English horn of Robert Sheenah and Kip Zimmerman’s oboe colored artfully, piping up repeatedly with brief but essential contributions. The horns and cellos frequently melded moltenly in counterpoint to the larger themes. Concertmaster Nathan Cole’s short, but elegantly detailed recaps of principal moments relaxed us before the massive peroration.

Symphony Hall was a great place to be last night as the crowd roared approval for Nelsons and the orchestra.

Lee Eiseman is the publisher of the Intelligencer