Let’s see if you’ve heard this one: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Leonard Bernstein all walk into a bar…

The result, which is less a punchline and more of a symphonic synthesis, could be heard this past week at Symphony Hall.

This weekend, the Boston Symphony Orchestra performed Tchaikovsky’s “Violin Concerto,” Tilson Thomas’s “Whitman Songs,” and Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from “West Side Story.” While the three pieces differ widely in style, it’s the similarities in the composers’ personal lives that connect them—it turns out, the three artists would have had plenty to talk about. 

The performances were led by Teddy Abrams, the music director of the Louisville Orchestra, and the guest conductor. 

Mentorship proved to be the throughline that night. Abrams was taught by conductor-composer Tilson Thomas, who, in turn, received lessons from Leonard Bernstein. Both Bernstein and Tilson Thomas studied at the BSO’s Tanglewood Music Center. By finally making his conducting debut at the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Abrams fulfilled the role he inherited from his predecessors.

The concert began with “Violin Concerto,” a piece Tchaikovsky composed in 1878 with the help of his student Iosif Kotek, his muse and likely lover. Taiwanese Australian violinist Ray Chen took the stage as the solo violinist.

Chen, an internet personality with more than 670,000 subscribers on YouTube, made his own BSO debut this week too. Students of ages ranging from elementary to college years, likely there to see Chen, packed the box office lines on Sunday afternoon for the Orchestra’s final performance. This led to a much younger crowd than the BSO regularly draws in, which Chen expressed his gratitude for after his performance.

From the orchestra seating, one could see the constant emotion painted over Chen’s face as he oscillated between moments that required a childlike whimsy, to others that seemed to exhaust his soul. His fluid body moments brought new meaning to the term “feeling the music.”

After the Concerto, Chen and the orchestra followed with an encore. The piece, titled “Serenade,” was composed by Chen and collaborator Eunike Tanzil, a 2020 graduate from the Berklee College of Music. Chen described the piece as a “cinematic waltz” that “blends the old and the new together.”

After a brief intermission, Abrams returned to his podium with baritone Dashon Burton in tow for Tilson Thomas’s “Whitman Songs,” three orchestral pieces based on the works of Walt Whitman. In a touching moment, Abrams spoke on his relationship with Tilson Thomas, and how his encouragement helped Abrams cultivate a love for conducting. His appreciative speech comes at a time when Tilson Thomas is currently fighting brain cancer recurrence, after revealing in 2022 that he had been diagnosed with glioblastoma.

Abrams’s mentor was fascinated with how Whitman’s work reflected the beauty of the country that molded both he and the poet. His “Whitman Songs” puts orchestral scores to three Whitman poems: “Who Goes There?” (an excerpt from “Song of Myself”), “At Ship’s Helm,” and “We Two Boys Together Clinging.” Burton provided a booming vocal accompaniment consisting of the respective poems. 

According to the concert’s program, Tilson Thomas describes the three-song piece as moving from dissonance to consonance. He recalls the eye-opening moment when he initially encountered Whitman’s poetry. “Whitman’s life work is revolutionary, and it helped me deal with the big question of ‘Who am I?’ One of the answers Whitman gave me was, ‘I am an American.’”

There are also more personal, intimate connections between Whitman and Tilson Thomas. It is noteworthy that Whitman’s queerness has been speculated, and it has recently shed a new light on his work. Not only is Tilson Thomas queer, but so were Tchaikovsky and Bernstein.

Bernstein came last in the set. If audience members hadn’t heard Tchaikovsky before, or they were only familiar with Whitman’s poetry and not Tilson’s accompaniment, then their best bet to recognize a tune was Bernstein’s melodies in his Symphonic Dances from “West Side Story.” Beginning with the “Prologue,” the piece took the audience from the show’s intro with the Jets (with the musicians even emulating the gang’s signature snapping) into the “Mambo” dance-off between gang members, to the tender “Meeting Scene” with Maria and Tony, all the way to the “Finale.”

With the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s inspired choice to closely examine three composers and the qualities that connect them, despite their different nationalities and musical tendencies, the BSO provided a diverse experience that managed to be both new and familiar. From March 13 to March 16 at Symphony Hall, there was something for everyone, whether to be learned or to remember.