MUSIC REVIEW : Salonen’s Brave Try to Bridge 2 Worlds : Pitting modernism against classicism, the L.A. Philharmonic ends up serving Schoenberg better than Mozart.

Say this for Esa-Pekka Salonen: He is a man of his time.

And say this too: He has guts.

The 35-year-old maestro proved both points, for better or worse, Thursday night when he led the Los Angeles Philharmonic through a bracing program that pitted the abstract violence of Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) against the classical serenity of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791).

Schoenberg won.

That doesn’t mean, of course, that the titan of the so-called second Viennese school is a better composer than the paragon of the first. It only means that Salonen still finds himself more at home in the contemporary idiom.

Before he took over the duties of music director at the Music Center in 1992, Salonen served notice that he would not coddle the aging, essentially conservative Philharmonic subscribers. He wasn’t sure if he would find a new audience, he announced with a grim grin, or just lose this one.

The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion wasn’t exactly packed at the beginning of the concert this week, and it was even less packed after intermission. Modernism, even when served together with hum-along hits, remains a bitter pill for our symphonic masses.

Those who stayed at least listened, and then applauded politely. In the not-too-distant bad old days, the public used to jeer at the first threat of a dissonant chord and boo afterward.

It is ironic, in any case, that patrons still regard Schoenberg as something of a threat. He fought his noble fights a long, long time ago. The epochal Five Pieces for Orchestra, Opus 16, which opened the first half program, were written in 1909. The “Begleitmusik zu einer Lichtspielszene” (Accompaniment to a Film Scene), which began the second half, dates back to 1930.

If anyone can make a persuasive argument for such uncompromisingly demanding challenges, it must be Salonen. He unravels the linear knots, enforces clarity at all times, focuses the drama--if there is any--with pointed logic. His sympathy is obvious, his execution elegant.

Brilliantly supported by the Philharmonic elite, he defined the instantly shifting moods, the bold colors, the gnarled counterpoint and compact expressionism of Schoenberg’s Five Pieces as if they were just five easy pieces.

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He enforced comparable interpretive nonchalance in the serial convolutions of the nine-minute score Schoenberg concocted for an imaginary movie. In the process, he reinforced the composer’s descriptive titles--”Threatening Danger,” “Fear,” “Catastrophe”--with something remarkably akin to passion.

In Schoenberg he was hot. In Mozart, alas, he was cool.

The centerpiece on the agenda was Mozart’s sublime B-flat Concerto, K. 595, which served as a most auspicious debut vehicle for Russian pianist Alexei Lyubimov. He played with remarkable fluidity and grace--even charm--within a relatively grand dynamic scale. His emotive efforts were somewhat straitjacketed, however, by merely efficient, sometimes almost mechanical accompaniment from Salonen and the orchestra.

Even more troubling was the “Jupiter” symphony, which brought the evening to a streamlined, essentially prosaic close. Salonen mustered crisp momentum for the opening allegro, hasty lyricism for a rather bland andante, callous accents for a minuet that stubbornly refused to dance and brash excitement for an allegro finale that ended in a wild scramble.

The Philharmonic, so precise in the forbidding Schoenberg, sounded surprisingly ragged in the familiar Mozart. The worlds were badly bridged.