For "Peer Gynt, " he selected 15 of Grieg's 26 original musical numbers only five from the easy-listening, almost-too-popular "Peer Gynt" suites Grieg extracted from the original in 1888 and 1891.

WSJ: "Peer" Pressure | Peer Gynt | San Francisco Symphony Orchestra | By David Littlejohn

Having read "Peer Gynt, " and having seen it presented with no more than minimal music, I wish someone could have talked Ibsen into radically reducing and editing the text.

WSJ: "Peer" Pressure | Peer Gynt | San Francisco Symphony Orchestra | By David Littlejohn

Somehow, rolled together with Grieg's rich, sympathetic score like both Schnittke and Mr. Holloway, he was a master of orchestral coloration "Peer Gynt" begins to make a kind of irrational, dreamlike sense.

WSJ: "Peer" Pressure | Peer Gynt | San Francisco Symphony Orchestra | By David Littlejohn

The annual Peer Gynt Festival in Norway, which does mount a full, uncut 1876 version, enlists 100 student performers to fill up the ranks, in addition to professional musicians, singers and actors.

WSJ: "Peer" Pressure | Peer Gynt | San Francisco Symphony Orchestra | By David Littlejohn

Almost anyone with the temerity to mount a new version of "Peer Gynt" Henrik Ibsen's (or Edvard Grieg's, or Ibsen's-plus-Grieg's) immense, all-over-the-map epic drama with music has to make major changes from the original 1876 production.

WSJ: "Peer" Pressure | Peer Gynt | San Francisco Symphony Orchestra | By David Littlejohn

In addition to inserting Mr. Holloway's welcome orchestral interlude which (together with skillful projections) did convey something of Peer's global misadventures, as well as spare us some of Ibsen's and Grieg's less-successful scenes he added three grating, scary orchestral episodes from Alfred Schnittke's music for "Peer Gynt" written between 1985 and 1987.

WSJ: "Peer" Pressure | Peer Gynt | San Francisco Symphony Orchestra | By David Littlejohn