MUSIC REVIEW : Philharmonic’s Diamond Sparkles : Music: The L.A. orchestra opens its 75th season with Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

One of the more enduring traditions in these 75 years of Los Angeles Philharmonic concerts has been the orchestra’s playing of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony on festive, or important fund-raising, occasions. That tradition goes back decades, both downtown and at Hollywood Bowl.

A sensible programming strategy, it was revived, quite appropriately, for the first program of this Diamond Anniversary season Thursday night in the Music Center’s Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted, the vocal soloists were Faye Robinson, Carmella Jones, Howard Haskin and Gregg Baker, and three choral bodies--the Los Angeles Master Chorale, the Korean Master Chorale and the William Grant Still Chorale, with a total onstage membership of 200--undertook the rigors of the famous finale.

That crowded stage after intermission--the first half had offered medium-energy run-throughs of works by Schoenberg and Stravinsky--recalled the first time the Philharmonic played Beethoven’s Ninth in the Pavilion, on the third night of Music Center-opening concerts, Dec. 8, 1964. In those days, the auditorium’s name was only one word long, the conductor was Zubin Mehta (all of 28 at that moment), and the soloists Ella Lee, Shirley Verrett, David Poleri and Jerome Hines.

An identical sense of recent arrival and serious purpose seemed to characterize the mood in the hall Thursday, when the 1993 forces combined in a strong and persuasive performance culminating in a confident “Ode to Joy.”

Not all the depths in an otherwise well-defined Adagio seemed plumbed in this reading, yet the breadth of its poetry was indicated. Similarly, the wide expanse of musical thought that connects the opening and scherzo movements--though the latter proved not very playful at its central lightening-up--created an arch that introduced the slow movement convincingly. In all moments, the orchestra seemed vigorous and on its mettle in responding to its leader.

The choral finale demands, and here brought out, whatever virtues performers have. These forces rose to all challenges, the instrumentalists sure-footed, the chorus singers accomplished.

Salonen, leading his first Ninth with this orchestra, used those grand pauses in the score grandly, sometimes giving them equal, rather than differentiated, weight. He will, perhaps, approach the work’s rhetoric differently 10 years from now, when he is 45.

The scheduled tenor soloist, Taro Ichihara, having canceled, “for medical reasons,” the announced solo vocal quartet was changed. Haskin, an apparently gifted singer of special achievement, dispatched the tenor duties in noble fashion. Robinson, Jones and Baker showed high accomplishment and fearless scaling of the vocal line, while also sounding, with Haskin, like a genuine quartet.

The evening began, again appropriately, with the Fanfare from Schoenberg’s “Gurrelieder,” played invigoratingly by 11 of the Philharmonic brass players, with members of the orchestra’s percussion section. Then, the “Symphony of Psalms” became an underdone salad course before the post-intermission entree.

Stravinsky’s masterpiece on this occasion seemed to lack rehearsal, conviction, focus and aural balances; otherwise, we recognized its profile. The instruments did not overplay, yet covered the singers consistently. The Master Chorale produced nice, timid sounds but unclear words, and seemed not to know the direction in which those words lead.

This program is scheduled to be repeated tonight at 8 and Sunday at 2:30 p.m. Sunday’s performance will be broadcast live on KCRW (FM 89.9) during a six-hour program, 11 a.m.-5 p.m., devoted to the Philharmonic’s anniversary celebrations.