Tanglewood concludes its 2015 classical programming this week, culminating with a powerful pair of works performed by the BSO. The “heavy hitters” are Mahler (the potent Symphony No. 6 -‘Tragic’) and, of course, the traditional final concert featuring Beethoven’s glorious and triumphant Ninth Symphony -‘Choral’).

Following its Aug. 16 performance, the Boston Symphony Orchestra will return to Boston to prepare for its first tour with Music Director Andris Nelsons; the 2015 BSO European tour, Aug. 22-Sept. 5, will include performances in London, Salzburg, Grafenegg, Lucerne, Milan, Paris, Cologne and Berlin.

Not to worry, though: There are another two weeks of popular artist programming at Tanglewood, featuring, as always, diverse programming: the Boston Pops, the ever-popular "Film Night," Broadway and Disney superstar Idina Menzel, singer/movie star Harry Connick Jr., actress Kristin Chenoweth and more.

For all that, the upcoming program at Concerts at Tannery Pond is not to be missed, as it promises to be spectacular: The phenomenal pianist Jeremy Denk offers a program of Bartok, Scriabin and Beethoven that will almost literally explode from the keyboard. This is a recital you won’t want to miss; especially for piano mavens, it will certainly be one of the high points of the entire summer season.

Looking ahead, these last two months of magnificent music making are but a prelude to the fall array of area classical offerings on the horizon – mostly chamber music - at Tannery Pond, in New Lebanon, N.Y., into September, and at South Mountain Concerts, in Pittsfield, in September and continuing into October. I’ll highlight these in advance as time draws near. For now, here are the particulars for the next several days.

At Tanglewood this week

• Thursday, Aug. 13, 8 p.m. in Ozawa Hall: "Koussevitzky Artist" Yo-Yo Ma invites eight celebrated cellists for a program titled “A Distant Mirror.” In a special cello-centric evening, this consortium of musicians, including the Boston Cello Quartet and BSO cellists presents a fascinating program exploring the late16th and early 17th centuries - a unique period of globalization, cultural exchange, and artistic ferment. Informed by “A Distant Mirror,” by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Barbara Tuchman, Yo-Yo Ma and his colleagues explore the musical world and contemporary resonances of this three centuries-later age - and of its most celebrated literary figures, Shakespeare and Cervantes.

• Friday, Aug. 14, 8:30 p.m. in the Shed: BSO Music Director/conductor Andris Nelsons leads the orchestra and acclaimed German violinist Christian Tetzlaff in Mendelssohn’s luminous and ravishing Violin Concerto. The program concludes with Mahler’s rarely heard, monumental Symphony No. 6, marked by its dark, emotional intensity and known for its three cataclysmic hammer blows in the finale, which the composer later believed presaged three great misfortunes in his life: the death of his daughter, the loss of the directorship of the Vienna Court Opera, and the diagnosis of the heart condition that would ultimately lead to his death. This is a concert not to be missed for its overwhelming emotional impact.

• Saturday, Aug. 15, 8:30 p.m. in the Shed: Highly acclaimed Latvian soprano Kristine Opolais joins BSO Music Director Andris Nelsons for a program of operatic showpieces. Focusing on Italian works from the late 19th century, the excerpts include the Willow Song and “Ave Maria” from Act IV of Verdi’s dark and dramatic Otello; the sweeping, searingly passionate orchestral Intermezzo from Act III of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut; and “L’altra note in fondo al mare” from Act III of Arrigo Boito’s Mefistofele—the most significant work by the composer known for his librettos to Verdi’s Otello and Falstaff. The program begins with Barber’s “Second Essay for Orchestra,” composed in 1942 and concludes with Richard Strauss’s bold and powerful orchestral tone poem “Ein Heldenleben,” which, analogous in some ways to a musical “selfie” - Strauss, the self-described hero - incorporates allusions to several of the composer’s earlier works.

• Sunday, Aug. 16, 2:30 p.m. in the Shed: Maestro Asher Fisch will lead the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra and the BSO in their final appearances of the 2015 Tanglewood season in this single concert. The program will open with the TMCO performing Copland’s “Symphonic Ode”—a work commissioned by the BSO in celebration of the Orchestra’s 50th anniversary—as the final concert of the TMC’s 75th anniversary celebration. The BSO will then take the stage for its traditional season-ending performance of Beethoven’s epic Symphony No. 9, featuring vocal soloists soprano Julianna Di Giacomo, mezzo-soprano Renée Tatum, tenor Paul Groves, and bass-baritone John Relyea, in addition to the magnificent Tanglewood Festival Chorus.

Tickets for all Tanglewood events can be purchased online at tanglewood.org, via SymphonyCharge, 888-266-1200 or 888-266-1200, and at the Tanglewood box office located at the main gate, on West Street in Lenox. For further information call 413-637-1600.

Concerts at Tannery Pond

• Saturday, Aug. 15, 8 p.m.: One of the world's leading pianists, Jeremy Denk first played at Tannery Pond in 2002 when he was relatively unknown. In this, his fourth appearance at the Tannery, Denk will perform Bartok's precipitous “Sonata,” the mystical and darkly-hued Sonata Op. 68, No. 9 by Alexander Scriabin and Beethoven's Sonata in C Minor No. 32, Op. 111, with its two alternating movements of power and ecstasy.

Tickets are $30 and $39. Tannery Pond is located on the grounds of Mount Lebanon Shaker Village and Darrow School, New Lebanon, N.Y., one and a half miles east of the town center on Route 20.

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