A symphony program featuring exotic Eastern-European moderns, substitutes and  women-at-the-forefront provided a late-season highlight at the San Francisco Symphony, where the street might still be resounding from the unaccustomed claps and cheers of both musicians and audience.

And once again Susanna Mälkki was on the podium, clearly a strong prospect to be the S.F. Symphony’s next music director, with a big IF: provided she could be wrenched away from the current podia of Los Angeles, Helsinki and the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

The women’s program (June 7) was hardly dented by the cancelation of violinist Hillary Hahn, who delivered a baby—a bullet-proof excuse for canceling a gig. That still left aboard Mälkki and  fellow Finn Kaija Saariaho, whose composition “Laterna Magica” (Magic Lantern) provided the bookend for the  concert program encompassing music from the time span 1875-2008.

“Laterna Magica” is a voluptuous ear-opener, an exercise in sensuous sonics rather than melodies. You just sat back and let delicious sounds waft over you in this feast for the ears. A serene calm featuring genteel percussion and occasional whispers from the players is dominant, with occasional gusts and sneaker waves from the big brass. Saariaho’s soundscape includes some foundry-like outbursts, but a lot of harp, marimba and tamtam to produce wondrous sounds over 22 minutes.

Best-known for her fanciful 2000 opera of yearning  “L’amour de loin” (The Distant Love), which has played both Santa Fe and the Met, Saariaho remains one of the salient modernists  with wit and imagination.

Scriabin’s“Poem of Ecstasy” (1907) is Russian-exotic, with the visionary composer striving for cosmic effects, a bit like “Thus Spake Zarathustra” and “The Planets.” Its trumpet solo (Mark Inouye) is repetitive, and some Debussy influence is perceptible. But Scriabin charted his own path through outer space, ending with what is best described as a supernova explosion.

The most musical solo I have ever heard in the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto (among agood 25-35 auditions over the years) came from the elite “substitute” for Hahn, the Danish-Israeli violinist Nikolaj Zneider, 42. He didn’t just play the solo, he shaped it and phrased it, with ups and downs almost like conversation. It was absolutely brilliant musically, winning a rare, prolonged ovation from the musicians themselves, quite apart from the audience’s equally rare approbation after merely the first movement. He followed with an encore, Bach’s Sarabande (from PartitaNo. 2, D Minor).

His seldom-heard SF performances can only be explained by his busy dual career in Europe, where he conducts as far east as St. Petersburg in addition to violin engagements. Pity for us, laudable for him!!

San Francisco Symphony in Eastern European moderns. Davies Hall, S.F., June 7. For info: (415) 864-6000, or go online.

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