SAN DIEGO — Standing ovations are not uncommon in the Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center, the $82 million home of La Jolla Music Society. But the multiple standing ovations given at Friday’s “SummerFest at 40!” concert in the center’s 7-year-old Baker-Baum Concert Hall took on greater significance during a night designed to both celebrate and extend SummerFest’s legacy.

The concert concluded with an often sublime reading of Tchaikovsky’s Sextet for Strings in D Minor, Opus 70 “Souvenir de Florence,” which was the final selection performed at the debut edition of SummerFest in 1986. It was immediately preceded Friday by the California premiere of composer and saxophonist Steven Banks’ to be free, a stirring, deeply felt tribute to Nina Simone that was co-commissioned by La Jolla Music Society.

Adding to the sweeping musical arc of the night, the Tchaikovsky Sextet featured violinist Cho-Liang “Jimmy” Lin, who served as SummerFest’s music director from 2000 to 2018. He also performed during the first half of the concert, taking to the stage for a spirited reading of five-time Oscar-winning composer John Williams’ Quartet La Jolla. It debuted at SummerFest in 2011 and was commissioned for the event’s 25th anniversary.

Lin, not coincidentally, was also the violinist when Quartet La Jolla was first played 15 years ago. That performance took place nearby at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego’s now-defunct Sherwood Auditorium — which today houses the museum’s Strauss Galleries — and also featured clarinetist John Bruce Yeh, who again played alongside Lin on Friday.

For very good measure, this weekend’s concert opened with a piano duet by Inon Barnatan — who in 2019 succeeded Lin as SummerFest’s music director — and Jeremy Denk. These two exceedingly nimble keyboardists teamed for a rousing take on Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski’s intensely spirited Variations on a Theme of Paganini.

Their felicitous four-handed rendition lasted just under six minutes. But it was filled with quicksilver, roller-coaster displays of virtuosity and the sly humor Lutoslawski and fellow Polish composer and pianist Andrzej Panufnik brought to their Paganini variations in its original 1941 iteration.

Clocking in at 30 minutes, Williams’ Quartet La Jolla is a five-part work that politely utilizes dissonance and sometimes abstract rhythms. The composer completed it not long after the premiere of his 2009 harp concerto, “On Willows and Birches.”

The throughline between “Birches” and Quartet La Jolla is the harp, which on Friday was expertly handled by veteran San Diego Symphony member Julie Smith Phillips. The cascading glissandos she played were especially impressive in the second movement, while clarinetist Yeh soared in the Bartok-tinged fourth movement, which featured well-executed pizzicato work by Lin and cellist Jay Campbell.

Lin shared violin duties with Benjamin Bellman on the Tchaikovsky and the finely calibrated interplay between them was a treat. So was the assured manner in which they deftly traded lines with violists Paul Neubauer and Teng Li, and cellists Jonathan Swenson and Nina Lee to create a series of animated roundelays.

The 1890 string sextet was Tchaikovsky’s final chamber work before his death three years later. Filled with rich textures and darting unison passages, it has little of his characteristic darkness of mood, perhaps because it draws in part from the bel canto vocal traditions he previously embraced in his 1880 orchestral fantasy, Capriccio Italien.

While the sextet is not one of Tchaikovsky major works, its exemplary performance Friday was delivered with such conviction and pinpoint dynamic command that it earned a prolonged ovation from the capacity audience.

The highlight of the night came with the California premiere of Banks’ to be free which was jointly commissioned by La Jolla Music Society, New York’s Bridgehampton Chamber Music and Oregon’s Chamber Music Northwest.

It was performed by the remarkable mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano and a septet that included Banks on soprano sax, Denk on piano, Campbell on cello, Simone Porter on violin, Yura Lee on viola, and two members of the San Diego Symphony — flutist Rose Lombardo and bassist Jeremy Kurtz-Harris.

The title of to be free has at least two meanings.

It is an homage to the brilliant pianist, singer, songwriter and civil-rights activist Nina Simone, a Black North Carolina native — as is Banks — whose dream of being a classical musician in the 1950s was dashed by systemic racism. It is also a heartfelt mediation on the quest for freedom at a time when our increasingly polarized nation is marking its 250th anniversary.

That ambiguity is echoed in Banks’ score, which takes on the tone of a lament and a celebration, frustration and hope, struggle and liberation, the quest for transcendence in the face of the challenges posed by daunting inequities. After performing his stunning Saxophone Concerto with the San Diego Symphony last year, Banks’ overdue SummerFest debut for three concerts this month augur well for his return here as soon as possible.

Anchored by a recurring piano figure, to be free reflects — as Banks writes in his program notes — “on the idea of finding freedom through structure.” Accordingly, while its structural foundation is spare and minimalistic by design, the meticulously crafted melodies and harmonies it underpins are consistently rich and evocative.

By having the glorious-voiced Johnson Cano sing completely wordlessly, Banks enables his listeners to focus on the sound and emotion she is conveying, not on a specific text. And Cano Johnson spoke volumes with her wonderfully modulated delivery and unerring ability to impart deep meaning and complexity in each note she sang.

The music was imbued with grace and dignity in both its most introspective and uplifting moments. The three-part harmonies Banks crafted for voice, clarinet and soprano sax, while only briefly featured, were stunning. Banks wrote this piece as an ensemble work, not as a showcase for his formidable instrumental prowess. But in the few instances where his playing was briefly at the fore, usually when he was playing in tandem with the first-rate flutist Lombardo, it was a joy.

At about the 10-minute mark, to be free shifted gears from contemplation to something approaching catharsis. As the ensemble played on, Johnson Cano led the audience in wordlessly singing two recurring motifs that she had walked the crowd through before the piece began.

The audience participation served two purposes. It literally brought the listeners into the music in a most visceral way. And it achieved Banks’ goal of using music as a vibrant vehicle to showcase democracy in action.

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