Symphony Hall was packed for James Levine’s “all-Beethoven” concert, the latest installment in his ambitious Boston Symphony Orchestra Beethoven/Schoenberg series. (Even with the gorgeous pre-12-tone Pelleas und Melisande, will it be packed again for this weekend’s all-Schoenberg concert?) And the following night, courtesy of the Bank of America Celebrity Series, pianist/conductor Daniel Barenboim took over Symphony Hall with his Staatskapelle Berlin (an orchestra founded in 1570, though no one looked it) to conduct Mozart: the first two of his three last symphonies and, also playing, a piano concerto.

Levine’s Beethoven was another of his long programs: the enchanting Second Symphony (early Beethoven), the oddball Triple Concerto (middle Beethoven), and the masterful Seventh Symphony (late middle? early late?). The emphasis was on virtuosity. The antiphonal first and second violins, with a wonderful transparency of texture, made audible the written contrasts you can rarely hear when all the violins are on the same side.

In his program note, Levine explained that he was choosing works that demonstrated contrasts in Beethoven’s development, changes in musical language — here two symphonies with slow introductions and fundamental classical structure, but the early one filled with ideas “almost to bursting” and the later one “restricting his materials to the bare essentials.” We’ll get to hear a similar evolution in Schoenberg.

This Beethoven program chose exhilaration and speed over poetry. The Second Symphony begins Adagio molto, “very slow,” but Levine’s tempo was awfully brisk for an Adagio. The rest of the first movement teased us with expectations of tragedy and heroic resolution and gave us something in between. The enchanting Larghetto, though, unfolded a slow dance of ideas and delicate, gracious, almost Schubertian interludes. The Scherzo was teasing and playful. And the finale, Allegro molto, is in some ways this symphony’s high point of invention. Levine handled well the sudden slowdowns and ensuing eruptions.

Beethoven’s Triple Concerto, in which the “soloist” is a piano trio, is a big, enjoyable piece with a bad reputation. It seems to go on too long, and the attractive themes — so idiomatic, as Levine pointed out in his note, for their respective instruments (thrusting violin; warm, searching cello; broadly phrased piano) — don’t quite support Beethoven’s extended developments. But it’s a fascinating, anomalous piece. The last BSO subscription performance was nine years ago, so I was glad to hear it again. It begins with a masterstroke, a mysterious rumble that then opens out into something vigorous, public, almost ceremonial. The slow movement is a kind of passageway into the Polish rondo, a lively dance with the best tune in the piece.

Each movement begins with the cello, which has the most difficult music. Ralph Kirshbaum played with warmth but also with a strangely hollow, almost disembodied tone and (to my ear) occasionally questionable intonation. Violinist Miriam Fried provided the oomph, rhythmic dynamism embodied in a tightly focused tone, all line where the cello was all texture. The pianist was Fried’s son, Jonathan Biss, who gets better each time I hear him. After a slightly unsettled start, he played with imposing authority, and on a grand scale.

Audiences love the Beethoven Seventh. And this audience went bananas. But I didn’t. The speed was breathtaking, but there was a high price to pay. In the last movement, the timpani tapped out a rhythm that earlier had been impossible to distinguish in the full orchestra because it raced by so quickly. As in the Second Symphony, but with more at stake, the slow, solemn introduction went by too fast. Wagner called the Seventh “the apotheosis of the dance,” but who could dance at such speed? The first-movement Vivace was explosive but not very searching. Little lightning flickers in the flute (Elizabeth Rowe) and a poignant statement of the main theme in the oboe (John Ferrillo) hinted at an emotional expressiveness you can hear more consistently in greater performances. The slow movement, a kind of funeral march, can reduce me to tears. This time, I admired the playing but remained unmoved. I love the way the Trio that interrupts the Scherzo can sound like the comical wheezing of unskilled country musicians. By maintaining the quick pace, Levine ignored the music’s change of character. For all its energy and brilliance, I didn’t think this version had much character at all. So even the breathless to-the-rescue finale didn’t have more than visceral excitement. What most impressed me were the sudden moments of quietude. The BSO can now play quiet music that’s about as beautiful as music can be played.

That was a hard act to follow, and stainless-steel precision was not a priority for Barenboim or the Staatskapelle Berlin. But finding a molten emotional center to the music was. This was no bloodless, lily-livered Mozart. Within the framework of the classical style, Barenboim revealed dramatic contrasts not only between phrases but also within phrases. This might be one of Mozart’s secrets: the emotional complexity of those phrases, which then escalate the drama by banging into contrasting phrases.