Richard Strauss’ tone poems are a particularly tricky part of the orchestral repertoire, and a challenge to any conductor. Most of them are big, sprawling affairs that combine standard musical forms with a specific narrative, and it takes a special kind of savvy to make all the pieces cohere.

拉斐尔•Payare委内瑞拉指挥了n impressive debut with the San Francisco Symphony on Thursday, May 11, clearly has that gift.

有很多享受戴维斯交响乐Hall program, including the last-minute appearance of a gifted young piano virtuoso and the addition to the Symphony’s repertoire of “Darker America,” a strange and fascinating work by the midcentury African American composer William Grant Still.

But what lingered longest in the memory was the performance of Strauss’ “Ein Heldenleben” (“A Hero’s Life”) that occupied the concert’s second half. It was brash, it was tender, it was sweeping in scale and yet focused in its details.

It was little short of glorious.

That’s an especially powerful achievement given that“Heldenleben”may be one of the least overtly appealing of Strauss’ tone poems. It finds him in an autobiographical vein, which doesn’t often end well for him or listeners. (His“Symphonia Domestica,”a kitschy musical depiction of daily life in the Strauss household, can be hard to stomach even for die-hard aficionados.)

In this case, there’s no mistaking the implication that the titular hero is none other than Strauss himself.

He introduces himself with a bold, vaulting melodic theme that might as well be a form-fitting costume out of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He does battle with his enemies, a nitpicky, carping horde of music critics, and finds a true love who can stand beside him in his adventures. Finally, amid quotations from Strauss’ earlier works, the hero withdraws to his study to find peace and churn out operas.

It’s all a bit laughable, if not for the orchestral splendor in which he bathes the story, and the manic, fluid harmonic virtuosity that is always one of the composer’s hallmarks. And on Thursday, Payare — who is simultaneously the music director of both the Montreal Symphony and theSan Diego Symphony— delved deeply into those qualities to deliver a reading of persuasive power.

Great chunks of the score rolled forth with seemingly unstoppable force, only to pivot dexterously when the course of the musical argument shifted direction. The cello section, led by the orchestra’s terrific new principal Rainer Eudeikis, surged into the opening strains of the piece, to be joined by the rest of the orchestra in a show of unanimity.

The lovestruck arrival of Strauss’ wife, Pauline — a.k.a. “The Hero’s Companion” — was as shimmery a musical valentine as anyone could desire. In the score’s many spotlighted violin solos, concertmaster Alexander Barantschik deployed his characteristic brand of dry-eyed expressivity to haunting effect.

Through it all, Payare brought coherent logic to even the most overheated passages. For 45 unbroken minutes, he traced the work’s thread assuredly, giving moderately free rein to the brass and percussion without letting anything weaken the overall course of the rendition.

The evening’s soloist was supposed to be violinist Hilary Hahn, but shewithdrew at the last momentbecause of illness. In her place, the orchestra welcomed Bruce Liu, the Chinese Canadian pianist who recently won the Chopin Competition in Warsaw.

Liu offered a brisk, nimble and often affecting account of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3, marked by a crisp, slightly brittle keyboard touch and an almost delicate approach to the work’s technical demands. If the reading lacked a little of the dark shading in Beethoven’s only minor-key concerto, Liu compensated with a probing account of the central slow movement and a beautifully controlled romp through the final rondo.

By way of an encore, Liu delivered a blisteringly precise run through Liszt’s finger-busting etude “La Campanella,” based on a violin showpiece by Paganini. “This is one for the violin lovers,” he said, after graciously wishing Hahn a speedy recovery. It certainly was.

Reach Joshua Kosman:jkosman@sfchronicle.com; Twitter: @JoshuaKosman