LENOX — Of all the musical luminaries who regularly visit Tanglewood’s Koussevitzky Music Shed, three consistently command a standing ovation just for showing up: singer-songwriter James Taylor, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, and composer/conductor John Williams.
With Taylor and Williams having appeared earlier this summer, Sunday was earmarked for Ma — but on Thursday, ticket holders were notified that the cellist had withdrawn from his performance after testing positive for COVID-19. His replacement was announced as soprano Renée Fleming, who was miraculously available on a few days’ notice to sing some Strauss songs with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and music director Andris Nelsons in the slot where Ma and Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto would have been. No big deal.
Though Fleming didn’t collect an instant ovation, the audience showered her with well-deserved applause after each of the six songs she performed. Fleming clearly appreciates some glamour and sparkle in her onstage attire — Sunday’s program insert credited the designers of her voluminous green gown and geometric jewelry — but as soon as she opened her mouth, the radiance of her voice outshone all else. Sincerity undergirded every phrase she sang, and it was possible to forget that she was singing generations-old poems. Working with Fleming, Nelsons seemed to be in his element, and he guided the orchestra to exquisitely set the stage for the singer’s set, which ended with a gorgeous and lush “Morgen” with violin solo by associate concertmaster Alexander Velinzon.
Fleming’s performance was bookended by an affecting performance of Julia Adolphe’s towering meditation on life and death “Makeshift Castle,” a joint commission from the BSO and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra; and Stravinsky’s ballet “Petrushka,” a Nelsons favorite at both Symphony Hall and Tanglewood. I watched the latter from the lawn, and the audiovisual team at Tanglewood is putting in top-notch work. Though I’ve sat physically closer to the musicians during previous BSO “Petrushka” performances, I’ve rarely felt as attuned to every detail as I did while watching them on the big screen, and the sound mix projected to the lawn was crisp and clear. Should you be on the fence about buying a lawn ticket for next weekend, take this as your cue to do it.
Nelsons also conducted Friday night’s program, which began with Williams’s Violin Concerto No. 2, a showcase piece for violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter that premiered at Tanglewood in 2021 with the composer conducting. I’d felt lukewarm about the piece at its debut performances in Tanglewood and Boston but was eager to hear it again, and I was glad to find it had grown on me. The solo part was composed to highlight Mutter’s versatility and strengths, but even a bespoke pair of shoes needs some breaking in, and this concerto has only benefited from having a few more miles on it.
During last week’s Film Night, Williams joked about the blow to his ego when the intricate details of one “Star Wars” cue were drowned out by Millennium Falcon noises and explosions. With that context, it seems the composer seized the opportunity this concerto offered to incorporate as many of those details as possible, and Mutter and the orchestra rendered those textures and accents in stark, sensitive relief. Its frequent shifts between modes and moods sometimes felt abrupt, and there were moments when all those transitions dissolved into the muddiness of too many colors of paint mixed together — but it was never too long before clarity returned. It absolutely deserves a place in the repertoire, and I hope some other violinists out there want to answer its challenges. (Patricia Kopatchinskaja? Leonidas Kavakos?)
After the piece was done, Williams rose from where he’d been seated in the audience, received a standing ovation, and ascended to the podium for two arrangements of film themes from “Harry Potter” and “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” with Mutter and the orchestra. Nelsons conducted the evening’s second half, featuring a somewhat stagnant rendition of Strauss’s “Death and Transfiguration” and a dazzling, deliciously sinister whirl through Ravel’s “La Valse.”
Saturday evening featured the first appearance since the pandemic of conductor Susanna Mälkki on the BSO podium. Soloist Seong-Jin Cho applied an almost aggressively restrained touch to Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 9, and the effect grew monotonous sometime in the second movement, pristine performance aside. More rewarding was the second half’s Bartók Concerto for Orchestra, during which every player onstage (Mälkki included) appeared to treat their role with the importance and gravitas of a solo, and the music added up to infinitely more than the sum of its many parts.
Special kudos for the entire weekend is due to the BSO’s go-to pianist, Vytas Baksys, and guest principal harpist Emily Levin of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, who had vital roles to play in several pieces and each did so with unstinting style and grace.
BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
At Tanglewood, Lenox. Aug. 11-13. www.bso.org
A.Z. Madonna can be reached at az.madonna@globe.com. Follow her @knitandlisten.