With one of the finest concert halls in the world just a few hundred yards away, it is easy to understand why Birmingham city council was in no hurry to renovate the Town Hall. But now, after 11 years, one of the oldest purpose-built concert halls in the country has opened its doors again.

Symphony Hall is available for large events, so the Town Hall has reverted to its original seating capacity of 1,100. The upper gallery, added in the 1920s, has been removed, and the sound is all the better for it. Such a medium-sized auditorium should be ideal for piano recitals and chamber music, but as the CBSO's first concert showed, it accommodates sizable choral works, too.

Simon Halsey conducted the outer parts of this Edwardian programme of English music. Parry's coronation anthem I Was Glad was a suitably ceremonial opening, while Elgar's the Music Makers, first performed in the Town Hall in October 1912 with the composer conducting, demanded inclusion, too. Jane Irwin was the mezzo soloist, rich-toned, straightforwardly eloquent, in a work whose tapestry of self-quotations has sometimes unfairly relegated it to the second division of Elgar's mature works.

A few imbalances between soloist, orchestra and the Birmingham Symphony Chorus suggested the Town Hall acoustics still have their limits, but with Michael Seal taking over the baton and Anthony Marwood as the soloist the sound had a perfect perspective in Coleridge-Taylor's Violin Concerto. Marwood's command of a piece that stylistically ransacks a number of the great 19th-century concertos and adds its own brand of sentimentality was impressive, both technically and musically.