MUSIC : Salonen, One Year Later : Esa-Pekka Salonen has the L.A. Philharmonic playing brilliantly and he dares explore uncharted avenues--but his penchant for brash experiments raises some doubts

He is vital, photogenic, smart, talented, reserved, affable, tough and provocative. Some observers--especially those who are paid to sell tickets to his concerts--say he’s charismatic.

He likes to pose for posters and brochures in his jeans. He goes about his business without the benefit of an entourage. He doesn’t seem to know what a personal representative is, much less what one does. He registers surprise, even a modicum of alarm, when he sees his name on a Sunset Strip billboard.

At 35, he has become a figurehead of new-wave culture in an old-wave environment.

He , in case you’ve been out of the country, is Esa-Pekka Salonen, the boyish superman from Finland who serves as music-director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. Everyone--well, nearly everyone--loves him.

When he led his responsive ensemble through four controversial concerts at Hollywood Bowl this month, he completed the active portion of his first year on the job. The summer season continues, but it does so with a passing parade of lesser conductors taking temporary possession of the podium.

The guests are selected, of course, by Salonen, or at least engaged with his approval. For better or worse, the Philharmonic is his Philharmonic now.

All policies, official and unofficial, must reflect his priorities. He must take the ultimate credit or blame for decisions regarding soloists and repertory. He must define the mission of the orchestra, sociologic as well as artistic, and implement that mission.

Perhaps it is time to look back.

Salonen seemed to be the right man at the right time for Los Angeles when he was signed in 1989. His appointment was greeted with cheers in most quarters. The orchestra was in dire need of a little vigor. Call it spunk.

An unrealistic, stubbornly recalcitrant churl might have preferred a more mature, more seasoned music-director. This was Salonen’s first full-time position in the major symphonic leagues. It was feared that Los Angeles might suffer while the maestro received his on-the-job training.

Gloomsayers predicted, moreover, that the novice would be unduly influenced by Ernest Fleischmann. Everyone knows that our notoriously autocratic, unabashedly egocentric, undeniably capable impresario-in-residence likes to chew up conductors before breakfast.

The alternatives to Salonen, however, weren’t all that promising. The great independent music-directors of yore, the old-school virtuosos, the benign dictators who speak loudly and carry a little stick, all seemed to be unavailable. A few were occupied elsewhere. Most were dead.

In order to understand Salonen’s role in the realm of our cultural aspirations, it may be useful to recall a little history. The Philharmonic has employed three other music-directors in the past three decades. Each left a different mark.

Zubin Mehta, who came back just this week with his Israeli orchestra, set the standard for flamboyant star-power. He didn’t invariably please those listeners who valued introspection as much as thunder, but, from 1962 to 1978, he exerted a conveniently magnetic force in this land of plastic-lotus values.

Carlo Maria Giulini, whose regrettably brief tenure lasted from 1978 to 1984, provided a compelling counterforce. A gentle, pensive poet and, in his own romantic way, something of a purist, he resembled Mehta’s retrograde inversion.

Following these heroic figures, Andre Previn (1985-1989) seemed all too human. Although he was a solid technician, a persuasive champion of regressive 20th-Century composers ignored by both his predecessors and a masterly exponent of neglected semi-masterpieces from England, he didn’t look like a matinee idol. For all his sympathetic inclinations, he seemed to suffer from a rather limited attention span, and it was said that his energies did not always keep up with his ideas.

Most damaging, perhaps, was his relationship with Fleischmann. Previn couldn’t coexist with the man, much less dominate him. After winning some small victories, he lost the big war.

Fleischmann made it clear even before Previn’s departure that he wanted a more adventurous, more assertive, more marketable music-director. He apparently wanted a firebrand, someone bright, eager and glamorous. He wanted a positive symbol. He also wanted an easy bridge into the 21st Century, and an informed guide into Disney Hall, the new zillion-dollar home projected for the Philharmonic at the Music Center.

Obviously, he wanted Esa-Pekka Salonen.

Under the circumstances, the choice seemed reasonable. Salonen came with an accessible image, and he was willing--less than eager, perhaps, yet willing nonetheless--to cooperate with the sales department.

As a popular guest-conductor in previous seasons, he had managed to persuade even the most skeptical that he was more interested in music-making than in narcissism. In little time, he had gotten the Philharmonic to play for him with unaccustomed degrees of brilliance, suavity, fervor and clarity.

He declared bold intentions from the outset. A composer himself, he could speak with conviction for and about the music of his time. He hoped to bring younger faces into the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and, through recordings and tours, promised to make our orchestra an important presence in faraway places.

His motives seemed pure, and his artistic sympathies broad. His quiet tone of self-mockery was refreshing.

“I don’t know if we will find a new audience,” he told The Times in a much-repeated revelation before officially taking over the orchestra, “or just lose this one.”

The results are not yet conclusive. Even an overachiever like Salonen cannot take total possession of an apparatus as cumbersome as the Philharmonic in a single season. Still, the signs of change are coming into focus.

The Philharmonic plays well for its new leader, and it does so consistently. There’s no doubt about that.

Salonen commands a keen intellect as well as a dazzling stick technique. His surface wishes are never obscure. His signals remain calm and precise even in the most daunting, most convoluted challenge. Although his demeanor may become agitated when the music at hand flirts with frenzy, one never gets the impression that he is striving for a showy effect. This man conducts the orchestra, not the public.

He doesn’t conduct everything equally well. No one does that. Unfortunately, Salonen’s best efforts have not involved the areas nearest and dearest to the collective heart of patrons at the Music Center. Since the inauguration of the new regime, the box office reports a 20% increase in single-ticket sales--usually the province of youthful customers--but little movement in the number of subscribers.

Philharmonic subscribers are conservative by nature. They love their familiar romantic favorites. They aren’t deeply moved by music that comes before Beethoven or after Richard Strauss. They don’t always stay to the end of a concert if something possibly discordant is scheduled after intermission.

Salonen, by nature, is progressive. His own compositions tend to be imaginative, mildly abrasive and stubbornly analytical. They hardly invite instant hum-along responses.

He conducts the works of his contemporaries and of his spiritual allies from the past with rare sensitivity. He can seem a bit aloof, on the other hand, when it comes to the grandiose creations of a distant, more expansive, more emotive age.

He opened his regime daringly with Mahler’s massive Symphony No. 3. The performance may not have soothed any stubborn traditionalist who insists such music must be wrapped in many gushing layers of indulgent Weltschmerz , but it made poignant sense on its own thoughtful, objective, extraordinarily vibrant terms.

A week later, Salonen tossed off Schoenberg’s forbidding Variations for Orchestra as if they were Mozartean bagatelles. It was so astonishing and so beguiling that one cheerfully accepted the relative brashness--one didn’t want to call it insensitivity--with which he later defined the poetry of Schumann’s “Rhenish” Symphony.

The pattern became clear as the season wore on. The more unconventional the challenge, the more persuasive the performance.

A random checklist of gut reactions to Salonen’s affinities might look like this:

Ligeti? Great.

Saariaho? Of course.

Bartok? Fine.

Stravinsky? Splendid.

Debussy? Nice.

Berg? No problem.

Beethoven? Well . . .

Haydn? OK.

Schumann? Careful.

Brahms? Hmm . . .

Mahler? Probably.

Wagner? What?

Tchaikovsky? Who?

It is perfectly reasonable to expect Salonen to alter his perspectives with time, to fill in some gaps and strengthen some weaknesses as he continues to refine a standard symphonic agenda. One should be patient.

In the meantime, one has every right to hope for the engagement of visiting conductors who are good at the works that still make Salonen uneasy. Unfortunately, the Philharmonic guest list was long on Young Turks and short on old masters last season. There doesn’t seem to be much relief in sight for 1993-94.

No one can claim that Salonen’s first year was an easy one. The newcomer had to contend with a recession and a riot even before he signaled the downbeat for his first concert as music-director last October. Philharmonic business had to become a low priority in quarters threatened with fiscal disaster and civic unrest.

It must have been painful, if not embarrassing, for Salonen to compromise his commitment to new music by sanctioning drastic curtailment of the Green Umbrella series for the sake of cost containment. It must have been sobering for him to rehearse a demanding program last April while Los Angeles was burning, and then see the subsequent concerts canceled.

As a costly but prestigious prelude to his inaugural program here, he took the Philharmonic to the Salzburg Festival late last summer. His experiences there turned out to be rather traumatic.

He chose to open his first program at the somber Austrian mecca with, of all things, a Johann Strauss waltz. To make curious matters dubious, he conducted it with metronomic rigor. Forget the lilt and the hesitation beat.

A few traditionalists in the audience booed. The local press was unamused, and, strange to say, it wasn’t much impressed with the more appropriate fare that followed in the house that Karajan built.

A week later, Salonen redeemed himself--after a fashion--with Olivier Messiaen’s marathon of operatic complexity, “Saint Francois d’Assise.” Most critics hated the avant-gardish staging by Peter Sellars. But everyone applauded Salonen’s illuminating devotion to a formidably stressful cause. There could be only one problem: The conductor was about to be typecast, in Salzburg at least, as a modernist uber Alles .

Not incidentally and not surprisingly, Salonen sprang defensively to Sellars’ defense. The enfant terrible stage-director functions officially at the Philharmonic as a special consultant. Apart from an isolated event such as the forthcoming Gorecki/ethnic-pops concert at Hollywood Bowl (an afterthought for the Los Angeles Festival), the exact ongoing nature of Sellars’ relationship with Salonen’s orchestra remains a mystery.

At the time of the Salzburg trip, Salonen and the Philharmonic seemed to be floating on a cloud of mutual admiration. They regarded each other with loudly proclaimed affection, optimism and idealism. Players in the orchestra fell all over each other in a seemingly sincere quest to sing the music-director’s praises.

Now, indications of discontent are beginning to surface. The signs are small. Nevertheless, they threaten to be significant.

It really isn’t surprising, or alarming, to learn that some members of the Philharmonic--even a number of those who led the chorus of approval a year ago--now are willing to voice misgivings about their boss. In their demanding profession, good old-fashioned griping is a basic part of life. So, of course, is the need for anonymity. Only cheerleaders speak for attribution with impunity.

The complaints are wide-ranging, and many of them recur like leitmotifs, from interview to interview. According to the inside whispers, a growing number of dissidents find Salonen standoffish, impersonal and all too parsimonious with praise. He doesn’t let the orchestra know what he is thinking. The players have trouble reading his face.

He can be passionate, we are told, in Bartok, even in Haydn. But he can “sleepwalk through (Richard Strauss’) ‘Also sprach Zarathustra.’ ”

He reportedly makes arbitrary changes. Decisions concluded for one performance don’t necessarily hold for another. He alters schedules without taking the players’ personal needs into consideration, and sometimes comes to rehearsals unprepared.

“Esa-Pekka isn’t a mensch like Zubin,” sighed one nostalgic member of the orchestra. “He is cool even when he conducts hot music,” added another.

Members of the audience, both casual and professional, do not always perceive things as the performers do. One person may find commendable restraint in another’s sleepwalk. Some of the players’ laments, in any case, may represent exaggerations.

Even if they don’t, the disapproval may matter little in the long run. Conductors need not win popularity contests to inspire wonderful performances. Ask anyone who loved the Cleveland Orchestra under George Szell or the Chicago Symphony under Fritz Reiner.

Still, it would be unwise to disregard any indications of internal displeasure. If the Philharmonic can be uncommonly alert onstage yet uneasy backstage, danger may lurk in the wings. Given this context, two of Salonen’s last four concerts at the Bowl turned out to be particularly troubling.

At one, he hosted a seemingly misplaced jazz-trumpet virtuoso in a bizarre program that juxtaposed a quasi-minimalist fox trot, a jam session, a trashy Soviet-realism concerto and a set of pop/swing numbers--all as a prelude to Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra. The clumsy, unfocused agenda made no stylistic sense and it dabbled in questionable aesthetics. If you hear that all music is created equal, don’t believe it.

A week later, Salonen officiated at an odd Beethoven survey. Here, his penchant for understatement led him to trivialize both symphony and concerto. The noble scores sounded tough, dull and mechanical. Compounding disappointment, the brash young soloist offered a physical imitation of a rock star at the piano while reducing the exalted rhetoric to so much mush. One wondered if Salonen had heard him before engaging him.

Every artist is entitled to an occasional off-night. Artists who dare to take chances are entitled to a few more. These concerts raised serious questions, however, about the maestro’s standards, his hiring policies and his willingness to improvise in public.

The problems could have represented fleeting lapses in judgment and nothing more. Even so, they did reinforce some nagging doubts regarding Salonen’s temperament and taste.

The marriage may still be strong. But the honeymoon is over.