MUSIC REVIEW : Salonen Hits His Stride : The L.A. Philharmonic’s performance of works by Shostakovich and Bruckner reveals the strength of its bond with the music director-designate as he returns to L.A. after an absence since November.

Absent from Southern California since early November, Esa-Pekka Salonen returned to his Los Angeles podium Friday. From the evidence of continuing strong performances by the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion of the Music Center, all is still well between the music director-designate and the orchestra.

Salonen usually makes interesting programs, and this one, consisting of Dmitri Shostakovich’s First Piano Concerto and Anton Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony, proved so again. The concerto, bright but serious, outgoing but pensive, became an appropriate foil for the questing, ever-beclouded Seventh Symphony, a work with its thoughts, as Bruckner’s often were, in the world of spirit. The happily mundane meets the searcher after meaning.

In both areas of musical philosophy, conductor Salonen and the Philharmonic appeared comfortable; equally important, they seemed to bring out strengths in each other that complement these works.

There may be more smiles in the Shostakovich concerto than were made absolutely clear in this tight performance, but the good humor and serious intent in the piece emerged obvious enough.

As protagonist, Juliana Markova proved authoritative and resourceful, if sometimes less than an accurate marksman. And Philharmonic principal Thomas Stevens became the perfect trumpeter-partner, as he delivered his witty/wise obbligato lines with immaculate urbanity. Salonen led the entire proceedings with that full attention one gives to important statements; in his reconsidered reading, this concerto achieves a substantiality some have denied it.

He did the same for Bruckner’s long-breathed Seventh, in a performance that never faltered, but moved steadily and purposefully through the composer’s reiterations and ponderings, his digressions and longueurs.

This revival found the Philharmonic’s brass choir in top form, powerful but never noisy, tightly balanced, magisterial.

The whole orchestra, in fact, rose to the instrumental challenges with an attentiveness not all conductors can command from this ensemble. The work--performed in the Nowak edition--is massive and complicated; on this occasion, its size and inner workings seemed perfectly natural, inevitable, even. Those who don’t love it may not have been converted, but at least they left the hall unresentful.