If you were riled by Shostakovich’s Stalinist anthem opening the S.F. Symphony program, the worries were balanced by a much bigger selection from Ukraine’s stellar product, Sergei Prokofiev, whose grand-scale Symphony No. 3 took up half the program and shook the rafters.

So, the 9-minute Funeral March from the movie “Great Citizen” honoring the Stalinist patriot Kirov gets a pass this time, however bad the taste left in your mouth by its genuflections and fortissimos.

Following on April 25 came the far more lyrical Viola Concerto. Why are there so few concertos for viola by name composers? Is it because violinists regard violists as failed violinists, or because less skilled interpreters make it growl? Not such concern with violist-chemist Jonathan Vinokur of the SFS, who abandoned his college major in order to excel at viola, sitting in the principal’s chair here since 2009.

Vinokur never growled once, making his instrument sound inordinately lyrical through William Walton’s sunny and innocuous opus, stemming from the time between world wars when English composers rarely ruffled anything, studiously avoiding the harmonic adventurism rampant in the music world at that time.

Of far greater impact was the grandeur of the Prokofiev symphony, pieced together mostly from his suppressed opera “The Fiery Angel” which, with its misbehaving nuns, yes nuns, was too lurid for any one in the late Twenties. This had been a bold theme, unstaged anywhere for decades.

Here the composer lays out a spacious, instrumental tapestry bordering on the rambunctious, stylistically light-years removed from “Romeo and Juliet” or the Classical Symphony. The 33-minute symphony glowers with high tension in its dense orchestration capped by assertive brass (one of the SFS’ hallmarks).

The slow movement featured beautiful woodwind passages. In the finale, before the wild exuberance with bass drum, the funereal passage spotlighted oboist Eugene Izotov’s fetching solo.

Conductor Gustavo Gimeno had a firm control on the massive score, interpreting it like a true believer.

Despite all the cacophony, a service dog slept next to the front row orchestra throughout, unperturbed either by the contemporary politics or the raging fortissimos.

MUSIC NOTES—Prokofiev’s misfortune was dying the same day in 1953 as Stalin, thereby getting a news blackout throughout the USSR, though he was one of the most esteemed and versatile composers there of the 20^th century….Gimeno’s CV lists over 20 orchestras he has led and numerous works recorded, yet forgets to include either nationality, age, or country of origin. It turns out he is Spanish, with last name pronounced He-MAY-noh—a name to remember. If you don’t know his national origin, you can’t pronounce his name either.

SAN FRANCISCO SYMPHONY under Gustavo Gimeno, music of Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Walton. April 25-27, Davies Hall, S.F. For SFS info: (415) 864-6000, or go online, sfsymphony.org.

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