For BSO at Tanglewood, a solid hand at the helm

One has come not to expect per se originality or inspiration in this conductor’s work, but he is always dependably clear and forceful in his leadership, taking charge like a general directing the troops. The second half of Saturday’s program was given over to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, in a loud and broad-shouldered performance that drew a fervid ovation. There was, it must be said, a certain vulgarity in the way he milked the work’s final bars, so much so that the applause began before the piece was over.

Prior to the Fifth, German pianist Gerhard Oppitz made his Tanglewood debut with a fine account of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3, the outer movements strongly profiled yet musically fluid, and the slow movement dispatched with a ruminative lyricism. The program’s rarity was the composer’s “King Stephen’’ Overture, written in 1811 for the opening of a new imperial theater in Budapest, given here a solid if unexceptional reading.

Sunday’s matinee opened auspiciously with a serene, limpid performance of Mozart’s “Serenata Notturna’’ (K. 239), which places a quartet of soloists — in this case, violinists Malcolm Lowe and Haldan Martinson, violist Steven Ansell, and bassist Edwin Barker — in dialogue with the orchestra.

Pinchas Zukerman was also on hand as the soloist in Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5. Over the years, Zukerman has performed frequently on viola and you can hear it in his violin playing, in the weighting of his bow arm and in the way he lays deeply into the lower two strings to pull out immense quantities of tone. And yet, if his technique is always solid, what he cares to say with it in recent seasons has been less clear. His solo and chamber appearances can be frustratingly erratic, with his level of engagement in the music and his sense of sustained interpretive focus varying widely. Fortunately, Sunday seemed to catch him in a thoughtful mood. His playing still had an episodic quality but many of those episodes, particularly in the second and third movements of the Mozart, had a rich expressive generosity and, in those earthy rustic passages of the finale, a welcome sense of spontaneity.

After intermission came a rugged, robust performance of Strauss’s tone poem “Ein Heldenleben,’’ or “A Hero’s Life,’’ typically regarded as the composer’s extended self-portrait, one that also depicts Strauss’s wife, and even some of those pesky music critics in a section Strauss originally titled “The Hero’s Adversaries.’’ The work is densely scored and contains some vast sweeping vistas of orchestral sound. It is music well-served by a conductor with Frühbeck de Burgos’s strengths and he led it from memory, forcefully shaping the surging lines into a coherent narrative. The BSO’s brass gave all that he demanded, and Lowe, the concertmaster, took another turn in the spotlight with an extended mercurial solo portraying “The Hero’s Companion,’’ dispatched with cool poise and a tone that was rewardingly sweet.

Jeremy Eichler can be reached at jeichler@globe.com.