San Francisco Symphony, Christian Tetzlaff play with passion, meaning at Hill Auditorium

Michael Tilson Thomas

There are concerts that take you down known paths, and then there are concerts like Friday’s by the San Francisco Symphony at Hill Auditorium that open new vistas — in sound, repertoire and even in interpretation.

For much of the evening Friday, we were all Dorothy, cresting the hill to an amazing technicolor Emerald City. So much of what the orchestra, under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas, had to say and tell us in the first of its 2 concerts here (presented by the University Musical Society) was revelatory, and the fun was not only in discovering the new, but in being surprised by what was surprising.

Like the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto, for example, which in the hands of the extraordinary soloist Christian Tetzlaff and the orchestra was anything but the old warhorse whose every note and turn you thought you knew.

Not so, Tetzlaff and friends were here to tell you, with playing that was arresting and passionate, wild almost at times, and yet somehow modest. Nothing was quite as usual, but nothing was mannered. Tetzlaff’s phrasing, his way of taking time and giving it back, made everything seem fresh. And right.

Christian Tetzlaff

The audience couldn’t wait to applaud till the concerto’s end. Tetzlaff got a prolonged ovation after a first movement that was riveting in its spaciousness and its breathlessness, poetic in its dynamics and possessed — in all senses of the word — in its grand cadenza. Tetzlaff sang the Canzonetta with long breaths, the winds duetted gorgeously with him when the time came, and the last movement emerged, dazzling, gutsy, buoyant.

There was a lot of dancing in the Tchaikovsky concerto — the composer is ever at the ballet — and dancing followed it, too, in Ravel’s “Valses nobles et sentimentales.” What a feast of nuance and color these pieces offer. The orchestra showed just how many shades of waltzing there can be, from sweeping dances in glittering ballrooms to dances that are all lassitude and dances that just have the merest waltz perfume.

Color, and a sound world that was both familiar and startling, were the calling cards of Kissine’s “Post-Scriptum,” which began the evening and which was written for the San Francisco. It’s a substantial work in length, and an evanescent one in content. Its phrases come forward and die away like waves, each replacing the last. The waves get longer and more substained before they subside, and the sounds are unworldly — eerie almost. And yet, at the same time, they very much recall the natural world. The piece began to feel a little long toward the end, but mostly, it was fascinating.

If the evening began with the unfamiliar — and I’d say it also continued with it in the Tchaikovsky — it also ended with the relatively unfamiliar. Following the Ravel waltzes, the orchestra concluded with Liszt’s “Tasso: Lamento e Trionfo,” played with emotional depth and sound to match.

This evening, the orchestra and Tilson Thomas receive the UMS Distinguished Artist Award at a second Hill concert that features Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony. (Information: 734 764-2538.) I say, bring on the awards and bring the orchestra back again soon. And judging from Friday’s concert — and the orchestra and Tilson Thomas’s long exploration of Mahler’s works — tonight’s concert will have its share of revelations, too.