L.A. Philharmonic Announces 76th Year : Music: The orchestra’s 27-week winter season will open Oct. 6 with works of 20th-Century composers.

Esa-Pekka Salonen, music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Ernest Fleischmann, the orchestra’s executive vice president and managing director, have announced the Philharmonic’s 1994-95 winter season, the orchestra’s 31st year in residence at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion of the Music Center.

This 76th L.A. Philharmonic season opens Oct. 6, when Salonen conducts a program of 20th-Century works: Prokofiev’s “Classical” Symphony, the Piano Concerto by the late Witold Lutoslawski and Stravinsky’s “Sacre du Printemps.”

It ends, May 25-28, 1995, with four concert performances of Tchaikovsky’s last opera, “Iolanta,” conducted by Russian musician Valery Gergiev, and sung by five soloists from the Kirov Opera in St. Petersburg, and the Los Angeles Master Chorale.

The season comprises 27 weeks of programs, 12 of which will be led by Salonen, in his third year at the helm of the orchestra.

Among guest conductors appearing with the Philharmonic will be two from the British isles in their debuts here, Donald Runnicles (music director of San Francisco Opera) and Mark Wigglesworth; former LAPO music director Zubin Mehta; Simon Rattle, James de Preist, Mark Elder, Lawrence Foster, Eri Klas and Franz Welser-Most.

Violinist-violist Jaime Laredo will appear as soloist, and in his conducting debut.

Among pianists on the roster are Emanuel Ax, Imogen Cooper, Jeffrey Kahane, Stephen Kovacevich, Louis Lortie and Christian Zacharias, making his debut.

Debutant singers are Monica Groop, Karita Mattila, Suzanne Mentzer, Kurt Streit and Ruth Ann Swenson. The list of violinists includes Leila Josefowicz, Midori, Viktoria Mullova and Christian Tetzlaff.

Repertory for the season includes three new works commissioned by the LAPO, pieces to be written by Gerald Levinson, Steven Stucky and Rand Steiger. Besides 19th-Century and post-Romantic works to be performed, a sizable chunk of the season’s repertory will be devoted to five 20th-Century masters: Bartok (two works), Lutoslawski (three), Schoenberg (two), Shostakovich (four) and Stravinsky (five), in addition to Elgar, Falla, Hindemith, Barber, Dutilleux, Roy Harris, Szymanowski and Tippett.

For season brochure: (213) 850-2000.