PERFORMING ARTS : If It’s Well Known, It’s Not for Him : Thirty-year-old British conductor Mark Wigglesworth makes his Music Center debut with Shostakovich’s rarely played ‘Leningrad.’

When Mark Wigglesworth travels to new orchestras as a guest conductor, he has little interest in conducting familiar music.

It’s “just basic cowardice on my part,” admits the 30-year-old musician. “I’m young and inexperienced in certain music, and the orchestra and audience have memories of their definitive performances.”

But it’s more than that, Wigglesworth continues. He has even withdrawn from concerts, he says, because he didn’t feel “justified” in playing some pieces of music. “Why do we do concerts?” he asks. “It’s to say something new, not to just churn out old preconceived ideas.”

The maestro puts that philosophy into practice this week in Los Angeles for four performances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Music director-designate of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Wigglesworth makes his Music Center debut Thursday conducting Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7--the “Leningrad” symphony--and Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2.

Beethoven’s second piano concerto is the least known of the composer’s piano concertos, says Wigglesworth, “which I think makes it more worth doing so long as it’s a masterpiece, which it is. I’m not suggesting one does bad music just because it’s different, but there are enough masterpieces to go around that you don’t need to keep doing the same ones.”

That goes for Shostakovich, too. Wigglesworth has championed the Russian composer generally and his wartime epic--the 1942 “Leningrad” symphony--specifically. Although it is both long--75 to 80 minutes--and, he concedes, exhausting, Wigglesworth has conducted the piece perhaps 15 times over the past year in Britain and Holland, and will conduct it again in Chicago and Minnesota after Los Angeles.

Negotiating to perform a less-frequently played piece like the Shostakovich can be difficult, says Wigglesworth, particularly when the conductor isn’t so familiar either. “(Orchestras) have a problem because they want to sell the hall and if the conductor is not known, obviously they want to balance the equation and have a popular sort of concert in terms of the music.”

Ernest Fleischmann, Los Angeles Philharmonic executive vice president and managing director, concedes that he did offer some resistance to the Shostakovich, which has been performed rarely in Los Angeles. But he was willing to take the chance, Fleischmann adds, since “if played magnificently, it can make a tremendously powerful impact.”

That, of course, is what he and Wigglesworth are both counting on. Fleischmann had attended some of the young British conductor’s concerts, “and I was extremely impressed. He has something quite special that many other young conductors don’t have--a kind of quiet authority that really communicates to an orchestra.”

Wigglesworth, who looks even younger than 30, doesn’t remember when he decided to become a conductor, but he also doesn’t remember ever wanting to be anything else. He was raised in Sussex, an hour and a half outside London, by parents who are writers (his mother is a travel journalist, his father a playwright), but both parents and siblings played piano.

When he was 16, Wigglesworth conducted his school orchestra for the musical “Oklahoma!” A few years later, at London’s Royal Academy of Music, he and other students founded the Premiere Ensemble, which he still serves as music director. There are about 35 musicians in the ensemble, which just released its first recording, and Wigglesworth says his work with them remains “the most fulfilling thing I do. They’re all my age, and we discover (the music) together.”

The conductor’s assignments and experience accelerated after he won the prestigious Kondrashin Competition in Amsterdam in 1989. Although he initially postponed the competition’s prize of conducting 15 orchestras in Britain, the U.S. and Europe--he didn’t feel ready, he says-- Wigglesworth has since conducted many of those orchestras and others as well.

“You only really start learning once you get into the profession, because 90% of conducting is psychology,” Wigglesworth says over coffee at the Royal Festival Hall here. “The musicians are all marvelous, and it’s your job to get the best out of them. That’s a psychological skill, not a musical skill.”

He began to develop that skill in earnest as associate conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra in London from 1991 to 1993. At the same time, he served as music director of the London-based Opera Factory, continued his work with the Premiere Ensemble and made himself available for guest conducting.

It was in the latter role last summer at Royal Albert Hall, with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, that Financial Times critic John Allison called him “one of Britain’s most gifted young conductors.” And his reviews were also excellent in November, when Wigglesworth was a last-minute replacement for an ailing Sir Simon Rattle at the Berlin Philharmonic.

After his performances in Los Angeles and other U.S. cities, Wigglesworth will be spending most of his time with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, which announced his appointment as music director last August. The orchestra’s St. David’s Hall in Cardiff will become his full-time base starting Jan. 1.

There are four BBC orchestras in Great Britain: two in England, one each in Scotland and Wales. “It’s a perfect orchestra for me,” Wigglesworth says, “We have a lot of rehearsal time available, and it means that you can experiment more with repertoire because there’s a sort of safety net. Part of the BBC’s job is to take risks and play the slightly out of the ordinary.

“What makes this (BBC orchestra) different is that it’s the only orchestra in Wales. It also has a function, a responsibility, to play the standard repertoire, which I want to do just as much as the avant-garde. In London, for instance, it is much harder for the BBC orchestra to play Beethoven or Brahms because there are five other orchestras who feel that’s their territory.”

Aside from annual trips to the States and Europe, Wigglesworth believes in limited guest conducting. “Every orchestra is different in some ways, and that’s why guest conducting is quite stressful. You wouldn’t expect a solo violinist to play on a different violin in every city he went to. We (conductors) can only be as successful as our orchestras. And it takes time to get to know them.

“I feel very strongly that you can only develop as a conductor if you’ve got your own orchestra with which to experiment, free from the sort of stresses of guest conducting. You’re in a more relaxed environment in which to make music.”

Vital Stats

Los Angeles Philharmonic, Mark Wigglesworth, conductor; Lars Vogt, piano; Piano Concerto No. 2 (Beethoven); Symphony No. 7 “Leningrad” (Shostakovich).

* Address: Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Music Center, 135 N. Grand Ave.

* Price: $15-$40.

* Schedule: Thursday-Saturday, 8 p.m.; Next Sunday, 2:30 p.m.

* Information: (213) 365-3500.