FRENCH, VIENNA ENSEMBLES, PHILHARMONIC IN CONCERT

There are ballet weeks, opera weeks and chamber music weeks. The week beginning today is an orchestra week, one in which our own Los Angeles Philharmonic is on display--with an important guest conductor leading its Music Center concerts--and two other major symphonic ensembles pass through our neighborhood.

Tuesday, beginning a three-concert visit to Pasadena, Westwood and Costa Mesa, the Orchestre National de France arrives at Ambassador Auditorium. Led by its principal guest conductor, the American musician Lorin Maazel, the 113-member instrumental ensemble, 51 years old this season, opens its visit with a Berlioz-Tchaikovsky-Ravel agenda.

The “Benvenuto Cellini” Overture opens the program, to be followed by Tchaikovsky’s “Little Russian” Symphony. Then, with Regis Pasquier, the French violinist, as soloist in “Tzigane,” this program offers two pieces by Ravel, concluding with “La Valse.”

Reached by telephone in Florida last week, Maazel recounted his 30-year association with the Orchestre National.

“I remember the first time very clearly. I even remember the program: the ‘Symphonie Fantastique’ of Berlioz and Stravinsky’s ‘Rite of Spring.’ ” Coincidentally, that year of 1957 was the year Maazel began other long associations with the philharmonics of both Berlin and Vienna.

“When I was in Berlin, just a few weeks ago, I found out that there are still three players from the old days. That’s more than in Paris, where there has been a complete turnover in the personnel at the Orchestre National de France.”

The Orchestre National de France gave its inaugural concert, under founder D. E. Ingelbrecht, on March 13, 1936, at the Salle du Conservatoire in Paris. Within two years, it played its 500th concert.

Over the years, the ensemble became more and more involved in playing concerts over the radio, Maazel says. A complete reorganization came in 1975, shortly after which Maazel became principal guest conductor. The current tour is his third with the orchestra.

“I find it great fun for an American conductor to bring a foreign orchestra to the States,” Maazel confesses. “It gives our audiences a chance to compare what they know of that conductor with the experience of hearing an unfamiliar symphonic band. I’ve done this a lot.”

After four years of being more or less a free-lancer--”For 20 years, I was connected with great institutions: the Berlin Opera, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Vienna Opera”--Maazel in 1988 takes on the music directorship of the Pittsburgh Symphony. His association with the Pittsburgh orchestra goes back even farther than his other international connections. In 1948, as a teen-ager, he joined the Pittsburgh Symphony as a violinist.

“My contract in Pittsburgh,” the 57-year-old musician explains, “is not very demanding. I will be there only a few weeks a year, plus a small amount of touring. At this stage in my life, I want to spend more time on myself, on composing, goofing off, spending time with my kids. . . .

“But I may end up spending more time in Pittsburgh than promised, because I love that town, and they’ve been very sweet to me.”

VISITORS: After its Ambassador concert, the Orchestre National de France moves to UCLA for a Royce Hall appearance, Thursday (see music listings for program). Then, Friday, it plays a program combining music from its earlier Southland concerts, at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa.

And, speaking of the Vienna Philharmonic, that celebrated symphonic ensemble plays at Pasadena Civic Auditorium, next Sunday night at 8. Under Claudio Abbado, the orchestra will play Beethoven symphonies: Nos. 1 and 3 (“Eroica”).

In the meantime, another international visitor, composer and conductor Pierre Boulez, concludes his latest Southern California engagements with appearances with the L.A. Philharmonic and the Philharmonic’s New Music Group (see listings).

MORE NEW MUSIC: The second and final week of the New Music Los Angeles ’87 Festival begins today with the closing events at the CalArts Contemporary Music Festival on the Valencia campus. At 3 p.m., “Six Pianos in Search of a Player” will receive its world premiere. At 4, oboist Han de Vries and percussionist Arthur Jarvinen play a program of music by Dorati, Ludewig, LaVista, Stockhausen, Maderna and others. Composer John Cage, appearing in person, will be the subject of a forum to be held at 6 p.m. And the festival within a festival closes at 8 p.m. with a 75th birthday tribute to Cage with a concert of his music: “Credo in US,” “Theatre Piece” and “Etcetera,” along with an appearance by Cage and an exhibit of lithographs and manuscripts.

The festival resumes at the Monday Evening Concert, Monday night at 8 at the County Museum of Art, when the program promises two works by Hans Werner Henze and two by Kenneth Rouse.

Alan Feinberg is the pianist in a recital of music by Wolpe, Davidovsky, Ligeti, Ran and Busoni at the Arnold Schoenberg Institute, Tuesday night at 8. At the same hour, at the Japan America Theatre, members of the USC Contemporary Music Ensemble will present 19 miniatures for chamber ensemble by 19 members of the Independent Composers Assn.

Wednesday night at 8, two other events beckon. At Gindi Auditorium at the University of Judaism, Lo Cal Composers will present seven world premieres and, at the Japan America Theatre, the Taneo Wakayama Group will play contemporary music from Japan.

At the Philharmonic, Thursday through Saturday nights at 8, Pierre Boulez will conduct a Boulez-Stravinsky program devoted to the U.S. premiere of the revised version of his own “Le Soleil des Eaux,” a setting of poems by Rene Char for soprano, chorus and orchestra; Boulez’s “Messagesquisse” for seven cellos; “Zvezdoliki” (“King of the Stars,” 1911) and “Le Sacre du Printemps.” Among the featured guests will be soprano Phyllis Bryn-Julson, cellist Ronald Leonard and the Los Angeles Master Chorale.

Speculum Musicae, the New York-based ensemble, appears at the festival Saturday night at 8. Assisted by baritone soloist Jan Opalach, the group will present music by Babbitt, Bainbridge, Kraft, Schoenberg and Davidovsky. At 9 p.m. at the Lhasa Club in Hollywood, the featured ones are composer-performers Gregg Wager, Tom Recchion, Brad Laner and the trio of David Ocker/Ann La Berge/Vinny Golia.

The closing day, next Sunday, begins at noon in MacArthur Park, with Bonnie Barnet’s “MacArthur Park Hum,” an audience-participation piece. At 1:30, also in the park, Independent Composers Assn. and Lo Cal Composers sponsor a band-shell concert. At 2:30, Boulez leads the L.A. Philharmonic New Music Group at the Japan America Theatre in his “Le Marteau sans Maitre” and Schoenberg’s “Pierrot Lunaire.”

Closing the festival next Sunday night at 8, there will be a program titled “L.A. Eclectric” and featuring works by Michael Scroggins, Frederick Lesemann, David Stout, Robert Campbell and others.