Before we all wax euphoric over the new S.F. Symphony maestro—which the sold-out house did the other night—let’s pause and look at the bigger picture.

Esa-Pekka Salonen, who becomes the music director in fall, 2020, got a standing ovation before he had led a single note guesting Jan. 18. He’s dashing and elegant, all right, 60 but looking like 39, and he led a marvelous set of tone poems before an enraptured audience.

But no real judgment on a maestro can be named until getting into the meat-and-potatoes of the repertoire such as Mozart, as well as the symphonies of Brahms and Beethoven. So before sculpting statues to a new saint, let’s hear what else he can show us. One need only cite here the Boston Symphony, whose maestro Seiji Ozawa was colossal for many years in such showpieces, but less than inspiring in traditional classical repertory.

But Salonen did answer two queries effectively: First, his rapport with the musicians looked flawless. Secondly, in an evening of looking ahead, he was expressive, refined, and even explosive where needed. While he is no radical departure from incumbent MTT, he is likely to explore more Scandanavian/Nordic works as well as Eastern European with the SFS.

Leading off his concert program was “Metacosmos” (2017) by an unfamiliar Icelandic woman composer, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, 41. She is a skilled tone-painter, producing breath-taking soundscapes for large orchestra almost without melody. She has beautiful subdued sounds, like perfume in the air, contrasted against brass like crashing surf, hitting again and again, then throbbing bass drum. And then wispy strings, their notes rising to the heavens like smoke. All maintaining one’s attention over the 14-minute span. She cited her departure point as seeking “the natural balance between beauty and chaos,” which proved quite magnetic.

Whether you know Richard Strauss’ futuristic “Thus Spake Zarathustra” through Nietzschean philosophy or as the soundtrack of the space movie “2001,” it peruses unanswered questions of life, love and disillusionment flamboyantly, and the SFS musicians under the Finnish veteran Salonen played it magnificently, bringing out all those shocking modernisms (even some 12-tone!) that baffled audiences at its unveiling in 1896.

It’s surprising that Sibelius’ “Four Legends from the Kalevala” has only been performed once before by the SFS. The tone painting shows the young Sibelius at his most refined late-romantic style, with some of his dark Nordic brass sounds that are uniquely his signature. The great excerpt here is the subtle adagio of “The Swan of Tuonela,” where the composer showed that a graceful swan can be depicted just as well by English horn (soulful solos here by Russ deLuna) as by oboe (Tchaikovsky) or cello (Offenbach).

MUSIC NOTES—Salonen’s next Bay Area commitment comes March 15-17 leading the Philharmonia in three different programs at Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley.

San Francisco Symphony Music Director Designate Esa-Pekka Salonen, on the podium, repeating through Jan. 20, Davies Hall, S.F. For info: (415) 864-6000, or go online.