Conductor Has Baton, Will Travel : Music: After stints in Grand Rapids and Buffalo, Semyon Bychkov, a Leningrad native who emigrated to the U.S. in 1975, is now music director of L’Orchestre de Paris. The orchestra appears tonight in San Diego and Friday in Costa Mesa.

From Leningrad to Paris by way of Grand Rapids and Buffalo--it is not the most predictable of career routes, but one that has given conductor Semyon Bychkov a steadily rising profile and an impressive reputation on two continents.

The 38-year-old Leningrad native, who emigrated to the United States in 1975, is now the music director of the L’Orchestre de Paris, which he brings to Southern California this week with three programs featuring the French duo-pianists Katia and Marielle Labeque. The 23-year-old orchestra, which played Tuesday at Pasadena’s Ambassador Auditorium, continues its West Coast tour tonight in San Diego and Friday in Costa Mesa.

While the seriousness and flair of his work in music directorships at the Grand Rapids Symphony (1980-85) and the Buffalo Philharmonic (1985-89) attracted considerable attention, it was a series of high-profile, short-notice international substitutions during 1984 and 1985 that helped propel him into the limelight. He stepped in with the Concertgebouw of Amsterdam (for Bernard Haitink), the New York Philharmonic (for Rafael Kubelik) and Berlin Philharmonic (for Riccardo Muti), impressing the critics in each case.

The fact that Herbert von Karajan chose to mention Bychkov as one of two conductors he could envision as his successor also did not hurt Bychkov’s reputation. Or that he was mentioned as one of the possibles for the Los Angeles Philharmonic music directorship after Andre Previn quit.

The glamour of these events did not turn Bychkov into a jet-setting star. For all the attention he garnered through those guest appearances, he says building a solid, mutually rewarding working relationship with an orchestra takes priority over more overtly careerist options.

Speaking in a Manhattan hotel suite recently, just before starting the current tour in Miami, the curly haired, highly articulate conductor made that preference clear: “The idea of guest conducting doesn’t interest me very much anymore. I’m happy to make music with a few orchestras with whom I have an established relationship, whom I know and like. In the end, one has to ask oneself what one is working for--jumping from orchestra to orchestra, or creating something of lasting value by concentrating on orchestras with which you have the chemistry that enables you to open up and do the best.”

He continues to guest with the Berlin Philharmonic (with which he has made a number of recordings, including one of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 that garnered several awards), the London Philharmonic and the Bavarian Radio Orchestra, but turns down most other offers. His only North American guest engagement this season is with the Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal.

Meanwhile, he has plunged enthusiastically into his work with L’Orchestre de Paris, where his predecessor was another non-Frenchman, Daniel Barenboim. Working with a government-subsidized orchestra (it receives funds from both the French Ministry of Culture and the city of Paris, which is sponsoring this tour), Bychkov is relishing the increased freedom to focus on purely musical matters. “In Paris, I’m basically left alone to worry about my artistic planning and programming and my music. The American orchestral scene stopped interesting me for that reason; what has basically been happening over the years is that since orchestras must ensure their survival through private fund raising, they have become civic institutions. And a particular phenomenon has occurred--instead of fund-raising existing to support the orchestra, it’s almost the other way around.”

Bychkov’s tenure with the 120-member L’Orchestre de Paris has coincided with his increasing appreciation for, and interest in, contemporary music. He characterizes himself during his Buffalo years as a “happy slave” to the core repertory that was stressed at the Leningrad Conservatory where he studied--Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler, Tchaikovsky.

At that time, he said, “I did not have either a great deal of interest in the music of our day, nor was I challenged to go into it by the people who influenced me.” That started to change about four years ago, “but it did not actually become reality until I went to Paris. Now, if I look at the repertoire I do and my current musical interests, they are quite different from when I was in Buffalo.”

Those interests have led to a sizable number of commissioned works on L’Orchestre de Paris programs--Lutoslawski, Takemitsu, French composers such as Gilbert Amy and Carlos Alcina--as well as Bychkov’s close working relationship to two contemporary masters whose compositions he is championing: Luciano Berio and Henri Dutilleux.

Bychkov will conduct the La Scala premiere of Luciano Berio’s new opera in 1994 and programs many of the composer’s works in Paris, as he does with Dutilleux, the 75-year-old Frenchman of whom he speaks reverently: “Everything he has written is of such dimension; it always has something very important to say. It has never lost touch with the great traditions out of which he comes, but it is the music of today--it’s not derivative.”

Opera is very much on Bychkov’s mind these days; his first operatic recording, Mascagni’s “Cavalleria Rusticana,” with Jessye Norman and Dmitri Hvorostovsky, is due out next fall, and he looks forward to devoting an increasing portion of his energies to opera in the future. His next recorded opera will be Tchaikovsky’s “Eugen Onegin” (like “Cavalleria,” with L’Orchestre de Paris), which was the first opera he conducted during his student days in Leningrad.

Bychkov has never conducted in his native city, but that is scheduled to be remedied on June 5 and 6, when he will conduct the Leningrad Philharmonic. Those performances will represent a long-delayed debut: in 1974, as he neared his graduation from the Leningrad Conservatory, he was invited to conduct the orchestra (a rare honor for a student), but the date was first postponed and then cancelled as the party authorities became aware that the young Jewish musician, while not an active dissident, “didn’t accept anymore the lifestyle and the way things were then,” as he puts it.

Bychkov paid a three-day visit to the Soviet Union in 1987, and at that time observed “how difficult it had become in terms of spirit, how depressing it was in terms of daily life. People tell me it’s worse now than it was five years ago, and the most troubling thought is that it could be sliding into anarchy and total cynicism.”

* Semyon Bychkov will conduct L’Orchestre de Paris in Dutilleux’s “Mystere de L’Instant,” Poulenc’s Concert for Two Pianos and Orchestra (with duo pianists Katia and Marielle Labeque), and Franck’s Symphony in D-minor on Friday at 8 p.m. at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Tickets: $14 to $40. A free concert preview will be given at 6:45 p.m. at the Westin South Coast Plaza Hotel, 666 Anton Blvd., Costa Mesa. Presented by the Orange County Philharmonic Society. Information: (714) 556-2787.