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THE BSO HAS A BRIGHT NEW HIT on its hands. Its latest commission, Yehudi Wyner’s 20-minute piano concerto Chiavi in mano, got its world premiere and a wildly enthusiastic reception that was thoroughly justified. The Italian title, "keys in hand," Wyner’s note tells us, refers not only to piano keys that fit perfectly under the player’s hand but also to what Italian car salesmen and real-estate agents tell their customers: "It’s yours! You’ve got the keys — drive away!"

The piano starts out with a quietly jazzy solo, marked "Rubato improvvisando," and this illusion of improvisation continues throughout the entire piece. The piano’s film noir meditation is interrupted by an outburst of "animated" winds, laughing triplets ("Ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha!"), as playful and teasing as a Mendelssohn scherzo. (This made the Mendelssohn First Piano Concerto before intermission the perfect introduction.) Now it’s screwball comedy. But suspense mounts; ominous horns threaten something mysterious, sinister. Or we’re in a love scene — piano and orchestra waxing rhapsodic, postmodern Rachmaninov. Soulful cellos lead us into a big bravura orchestral climax. A twinkling upward keyboard arpeggio swings into a high-soprano duet for piccolo and sweetly muted trumpet. The piano even pounds out boogie-woogie to a washboard accompaniment before the jack-in-the-box ending (ba-da-boom!). By turns moody and excited, funny and passionate, the concerto keeps pulling the rug over your eyes and the wool out from under you. Yet you also feel the unfolding continuity in Wyner’s engaging inclusiveness.

Pianist Robert Levin, Wyner’s dedicatee, and an expert at improvisation, made me feel he was improvising even when he was playing the notes exactly as written. It was clear he relished playing both the Mendelssohn and the Wyner, and he made them scintillate. Under the baton of Robert Spano, both pieces had a vibrant comic energy that also made a home for tender lyricism.

Spano’s opening Wagner — the Siegfried Idyll — and closing Haydn — the London Symphony — were well played (it was a great evening for oboist John Ferrillo), but the Wagner lacked intimacy and immediacy (Wagner led the first performance on the staircase in his house on Christmas morning as a birthday present for his wife, Cosima), and Haydn’s jokes lacked particularity and point. Everyone must have been concentrating on the new piece. And loving it.

I WAS SO BLOWN AWAY by Renée Fleming’s final encore in her Bank of America Celebrity Series recital at Symphony Hall last Friday, I was startled by a friend’s disappointment: "She’s always showing us what a beautiful voice she has instead of just singing." I too had felt something like this throughout the evening. In several arias, she seemed to step aside and smile at how wonderful she thought the music she was presenting was, bobbing her head to the accompaniment, which surely no character in an opera would ever do. In the opening series of Purcell arias and songs, beginning with the wrenching and structurally complex "Blessed Virgin’s Expostulation" (Mary’s monologue depicting her desperate search for her son), I found myself wishing not only for a steadier vocal production but also for more precise articulation of the words, for more internalization and less acting out. The aria in which Fleming seemed to be most completely inside the music, Handel’s "O sleep, why dost thou leave me?" (from Semele), though it’s not the showiest one she sang, got the most applause. Who wouldn’t cherish her long-spun-out, endlessly rising roulades on the word "wandering"?

Fleming’s German may actually be better than her English. In Berg’s highly chromatic Sieben frühe Lieder and seven contrasting Schumann songs, including the exquisite "Mondnacht" ("Moonlit Night"), the most inward-reaching song of this set, she gave the words more individual coloration. She sang four encores. Richard Strauss’s opulent "Cäcilie." ("No evening is complete for me without a little Richard Strauss.") Puccini’s familiar "O mio babbino caro," with more understanding of the comic situation (a young woman wheedling her father into letting her buy a wedding ring) than is present on her recording. A mannered, overly inflected "Over the Rainbow" — jazz affectation à la Audra McDonald ("Somewhe-ye-ye-yere over that rainbow . . . the dreams that you dare to dream — they really do come true").

The last encore was "Marietta’s Song" from Korngold’s Die tote Stadt, one of the most gorgeous outpourings from the final flowering of German Romanticism. Fleming at her best is about how touchingly beautiful a voice can be, and this was Fleming at her most ravishing.

Her accompanist was German pianist Hartmut Höll, who’s best known for his teamwork with mezzo-soprano Mitsuko Shirai (his ex-wife), a singer more searching than Fleming. In the Berg and the Schumann, even in the Puccini, Höll played with an astounding musical intelligence and delicacy. The Schumann accompaniments were miniature tone poems. In the Berg, he seductively led the audience through the door into the 20th-century.

Fleming is disarmingly modest and charmingly self-depreciating, the anti-diva diva. "I thought we needed some cotton candy," she announced after intermission, returning with a billowing chiffon scarf over her feathery sequined strapless. "I’m positive I was channeling Glinda the Good Witch in this gown." Except for "Over the Rainbow," she was never unmusical, unintelligent, or insincere. Her challenging program was not the usual opera-star showcase, not just about the voice. But when that golden voice poured fully out, it was like a blessing.