E-Mail This Article to a Friend Futures past James Levine’s BSO history lesson BY DAVID WEININGER

The Boston Symphony Orchestra and James Levine end 2005 with a concert of four works that the orchestra commissioned and premiered. It’s the sort of convenient throw-together program that might seem like a stunt, but in fact it turns out to be a unified whole, with deep, interlacing connections to the orchestra’s character, and to the paths that lie before it.

On the bill, in chronological order, are Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms (1930), Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra (1943), Henri Dutilleux’s Second Symphony ("Le Double"; 1959), and Elliott Carter’s Boston Concerto (2003). Right off the bat you can see a mirror pattern: two symphonies, two concertos. Both the Carter and the Bartók, however, have a breadth and complexity typical of a symphony, and both symphonies are notable for a concerto-like emphasis on individual instruments and sections of the orchestra. Stravinsky omits the violins and violas and gives the winds and the chorus more prominence. In the Dutilleux, the "double" of the title is a chamber orchestra of 12 soloists that shadows the main group; the result is a strangely refracted concerto grosso. So you can see the program as a salute not only to a great orchestra but also to a marvelous group of soloists and sections. (And in that regard, let’s not forget the Tanglewood Festival Chorus.)

It’s also a useful key to landmarks in the orchestra’s development. Three of the four works are linked to Serge Koussevitzky, under whose auspices the orchestra commissioned and premiered the Stravinsky and the Bartók. The Dutilleux is dedicated to his memory and was premiered by Charles Munch — which is fitting, since the piece has an audible connection to Ravel and especially to Debussy, repertoire that Munch made the orchestra’s specialty. Indeed, it sounds almost as though Dutilleux were picking up where Debussy left off in Jeux, a piece that was on Levine’s opening program this year.

Levine has said that he wants the BSO "to have a Carter repertoire the way they have a Bartók repertoire." Well, if anyone has a Carter repertoire, Boston does. In addition to the Concerto (first played under Ingo Metzmacher’s baton), the BSO has premiered his Micomicón and his Symphonia and has played Partita under Levine as well. The composer’s language seems to be mellowing in his old age. It’s still thorny and an initial shock to the ears, but the construction is more lucid. You can see his shapes and hear the way things join together more easily; you get a glimpse of the road map in his mind.

That’s an important shift for any composer, but it’s downright amazing for a guy who'll turn 97 soon after these concerts. What would have happened if Bartók had lived to that age? It’s fun to wonder whether, like Stravinsky, he would have found artistic rejuvenation in Schoenberg’s 12-note procedures, turning away from the more accessible language of the Concerto for Orchestra, one of his last completed works.

Rejuvenation is what this concert is about — how an orchestra can pilot itself forward by looking at the futures it’s engaged in the past. If in 75 years the Boston Concerto isn't heard as often as the Symphony of Psalms is now, it won't be for the BSO’s lack of trying to hear what’s around the next corner.

Boston Symphony Orchestra "premiere program" | Symphony Hall, 301 Mass Ave, Boston | December 1 + 3 @ 8 pm; December 2 at 1:30 pm | $28-108 | 617.266.1200.