To an unsuspecting observer, the robust and mighty din emerging from Davies Symphony Hall on Friday, May 13, might have been mistaken for some kind of climatic or seismic event. But no — it was just the San Francisco Symphony, raising the roof under guest conductor Karina Canellakis.

The music of Richard Strauss sounded loud and forceful. The music of Lili Boulanger, louder still. The music of Witold Lutoslawski, loudest and most explosive of all. You might even say there was a theme.

Up to a point, there was something impressive about this display of force. Canellakis, an American conductor who holds a dizzying array of posts with orchestras in Amsterdam, London and Berlin, has a podium style that is potent but never imperious. She conducts with broad sweeping motions that seem to gather up the entire ensemble into a torrential rush of sound, and she shapes the course of a performance with rhythmic deliberation.

Yet just as inher 2019 debutwith the Symphony, there was something blunt and blocky about Canellakis’ interpretive choices. It wasn’t just the dynamics, which tended to leap to fortissimo at the slightest provocation and stay there; the overall shape of each piece also unfolded in distinct paragraphs that arrived and departed brusquely.

For this listener, the most persuasive part of the evening came during the first half, when cellist Alisa Weilerstein joined the orchestra as soloist for Strauss’ “Don Quixote.” In this musical evocation of Cervantes’ novel — a wondrous blend of tone poem, concerto and variation set — events come and go in pictorial splendor, each one built around the theme associated with the title character.

As a performer, Weilerstein also has a taste for the grand gesture, but on this occasion she balanced that beautifully with a vein of internal tenderness. Her characterization of Quixote was aptly vibrant and varied — by turns melancholy, reflective, heroic and foolish, and often all at once. Jonathan Vinocour, the Symphony’s excellent principal violist, made witty, joyful contributions as Quixote’s sidekick, Sancho Panza.

If the broader narrative shape of the piece felt a bit diffuse, there were still plenty of moments to savor. Canellakis shaped the orchestral introduction with limpid clarity and imparted a luminous sweetness to the closing pages; the arrival of an army of sheep, staring blandly at Quixote, landed with comic precision.

中场休息后，Canellakis将管弦乐队带入了管弦乐队曲目的一些不太熟悉的小路。She began with the first Symphony performance of Boulanger’s “D’un soir triste” (“Of a Sad Evening”), a bleak and sorrowful pavane written in 1917-18 shortly before the composer’s death at 24. This is music that wears its heart on its sleeve, but even at that the performance sounded overinsistent.

So too with Lutoslawski’s 1954 Concerto for Orchestra, a bold and extroverted showpiece that calls for plenty of urgency throughout. At times, as in the swift Toccata that occupied the center of the three-part finale, Canellakis infused the music with vigor and dexterity; other sections simply sounded blustery.

San Francisco Symphony:7:30 p.m. Saturday, May 14; 2 p.m. Sunday, May 15. $35-$125. Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness Ave., S.F. 415-864-6000.www.sfsymphony.org