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Partita is the hardest to "follow," the most intricate and structurally least Beethoven-ish, yet it also has some of the most dramatic music (it opens with a not un-Beethoven-like explosion) and some of the most beautiful: trancelike chords with fugitive percussive or brassy pinpricks of attempted interruption; a series of contrasting wind solos — searching English horn (Richard Sheena), frantic flute (Elizabeth Ostling), jumpy clarinet (Thomas Martin). This "game" gets increasingly desperate and dangerous. Levine’s version was darker, less playful than the DGG recording by Oliver Knussen and the BBC Symphony, which they made shortly after they gave the world premiere.

The middle movement, Adagio tenebroso ("slow and shadowy"), like Beethoven’s second movement (Adagio assai), is a very slow funeral march. It begins with a muted trumpet (the eloquent Thomas Rolfs) that sounds like taps — not unlike the Eroica’s heartbreaking oboe solos (the eloquent John Ferrillo). This lament — now muted, now wailing in agony, ends with quiet resignation, even acceptance. (I thought I even detected a hint of major chords.) And Carter’s finale, Allegro scorrevole (fast and full of scurrying), brings to mind a catalogue of present participles: circling, spinning, scampering, flickering, shimmering, tapping. It’s lighter than air, faster than a speeding comet. (Carter calls it his "Queen Mab" music.) The bubble says: "I am charming, wanton, inconstant, beautiful, gleaming, and noble, ornate, somewhat blooming, and fresh" — not unlike a combination of Beethoven’s buoyant Scherzo and the hide-and-seek variations of his fleet Finale (Allegro molto).

These two works, with their opposite views of heroism, made a fascinating cultural contrast. The Eroica was originally about Napoleon; then Napoleon betrayed the egalitarian ideal by making himself emperor. But it’s still a tribute to a fallen military hero. Carter is more demotic. His music celebrates "a picture of society as I hoped it would be — human beings cooperating without losing their individuality." It would be as hard to swallow a contemporary work with an ending as categorically celebratory as Beethoven’s as it would be to imagine Beethoven concluding a major symphony, as Carter does, with a poignant little piccolo solo (the eloquent Linda Toote) — the soap bubble popping and dissolving as it rises into the air.

The 95-year-old composer beamed at the standing ovation. He seems surprised when anyone likes his music. He said to well-wishers praising the piece at the stage door, "It’s fun, isn’t it?" Which is just what Levine is trying to prove.

LEVINE IS ALREADY PLAYING a more active part in Boston’s musical life than did the BSO’s previous music director. Last Sunday, after the Carter concerts, he joined the BSO Chamber Players (the orchestra’s first-desk strings and winds) at Symphony Hall (not the ideal venue for intimate music) as pianist in Mozart’s teasing and loving Quintet for Piano and Winds and Schubert’s Trout Quintet. I wish I could report that these were more than beautifully played run-throughs. But the Mozart seemed timid, under-inflected, and though the Schubert had more energy, it had little emotional nuance, variety of color, or searching phrasing. Levine is a cooperative chamber musician, but the Chamber Players need a strong leader. Best of all was Henri Dutilleux’s magical Le citations: Diptych for Oboe, Harpsichord, Double Bass, and Percussion, with the phenomenal Timothy Genis choreographing his complex battery of strokes without the assistance of a score!

IN THE MIDST OF THEIR YEAR concentrating on Schumann, Craig Smith and Emmanuel Music offered a performance of the oratorio Israel in Egypt that re-established their supremacy in Handel. The Emmanuel Orchestra (concertmaster Danielle Maddon) remains one of the music world’s wonders, playing with uncompromising sweetness and emotional depth and range. In the second part, which is about the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, these extraordinary players became buzzing flies and itchy lice, leaping frogs, falling hailstones, and a palpable blanket of darkness. They were both master scene painters and actors in high drama. The trumpet-and-oboe obbligato in the closing aria of the first part (Bruce Hall and Peggy Pearson) was a heroic game of tag.

The chorus was on the same level; its breathtaking depiction of the chase through the parted Red Sea would have been the envy of Cecil B. DeMille. I’ve never heard the exquisite "He led them forth like sheep" sound more heavenly, a sublime release from bondage. Smith’s pacing — sensitive, unforced, yet rhythmically alert and buoyant — was the breath of life. The dozen vocal soloists were more variable, with the most assured singing coming from mezzo-soprano Pamela Dellal (as the dying Joseph), the opulent-voiced Krista Rivers, and in the several star turns by the glittering young coloratura soprano Amanda Forsythe.

This appears to have been the first Boston performance of the recently-come-to-light final revision, in which, 20 years after its initial failure, Handel rescued this masterpiece by borrowing from several of his earlier works (especially Solomon) and opening with music more celebratory than his original funereal music for the death of Joseph. I’m not sure it was a significant improvement, but it was a refreshing novelty, and fascinating to hear Handel’s final thoughts. Smith preceded the second part with Handel’s organ concerto in F, The Cuckoo and the Nightingale, with organist Michael Beattie giving enchanting voice to both emblematic birds.