Masur, Gubaidulina make out-of-this-world music in Davies Hall

The sounds coming from the stage during the first piece on the San Francisco Symphony's Wednesday night program at Davies Symphony Hall were like none I've heard before. They were downright otherworldly.

The closest comparison I can conjure is perhaps background music for a wild, far-out science fiction film — or, maybe a musical score for a flick about a squadron of maddened ghosts dive-bombing the world.

The piece agitating my eardrums was the Russian-born composer Sofia Gubaidulina's 25 minute, single-movement piece, The Light of the End , composed in 2003.

Conducted, and indeed, championed, by the legendary Kurt Masur, the performance was a tour-de-force testament to the virtuosity and the steely nerves of the musicians in our San Francisco Symphony.

Gubaidulina's creation included a steady descending half-tone figure (ostinato) flashing luminously from an amazing combination of tintinnabulating, bell-like percussion instruments amid a cadre of violins providing recurrent whirlwind effects via slides (glissandi) up and down their strings. Tubas and trombones intoned warnings that sounded like ominous groans from the molten center of the earth.