Michael Tilson Thomas conducts the Philadelphia Orchestra

The lemon this past weekend was the cancellation of James Levine’s much anticipated appearance leading the Philadelphia Orchestra. Tilson Thomas, the San Francisco Orchestra music director, was summoned to fill in, but he did much more than that, winning over audience members with a classy program of Ives, Brahms, and Tchaikovsky.

Tilson Thomas has the Bernsteinian knack for demystifying music. Ives’s haunting “Decoration Day,” from A Symphony: New England Holidays, still has a revolutionary ring to it more than 100 years after it was written, with shifting tonal sheets of sound, extreme dynamic contrasts, and harmonies that grate and tear the heart like the conflicts the music commemorates. Tilson Thomas’s clear, friendly introduction to this work provided context and rationale, making the work more accessible to listeners who may have had their minds set against dissonance and polytonality.

“Like Whitman,” said Tilson Thomas, “Ives brings us a vision of America that was slipping away. Imagine all the songs of the earth played seemingly in conflict but all merging as one. Think of Memorial Day, the Civil War.”

Coaxing, not forcing

Tilson Thomas is a graceful conductor who draws sound from the orchestra rather than imposing his will, though his distinctive sound emerges. There was some interesting brass work in this piece, and the surprising inclusion of “Adeste Fidelis (Oh Come All Ye Faithful)” as a Memorial Day dirge. It featured “Taps” in one key, the orchestra in another, then after a rousing march, a lingering note, a shimmering halo of sound that whispers away.

Tilson Thomas’s reading of Brahms’s popular Serenade No. 2 was songlike and fresh. The work is almost a woodwind chamber work with orchestral accompaniment, or an extended oboe concerto, with remarkable playing and silky tone by first chair oboist Richard Woodhams. This is some of the loveliest woodwind music ever composed — sometimes a little dull, but lovely nonetheless.

And what could be more predictable than Tchaikovsky, right? Wrong! Tilson Thomas explored the Second Symphony (“Little Russian”) as though it were a work of consequence, not one of the practice pieces leading up to the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth. Right from the opening G major chord (an effect similar to the opening of Beethoven’s Seventh), Tilson Thomas had an unerring sense of this work’s intelligent plan and profound emotional depth. And let’s face it: there are plenty of Russian bombastics, too, but they’re never corny or just for show. Everything was thoughtfully laced together, and Tilson Thomas’s success with it reflects one of the reasons conductors do so well after the age of 50: Works begin to marinate in their subconscious and they can tap into that richness without even being aware that they do so.