MUSIC : Russia’s Latest Rocket : Kirov Opera Artistic Director Valery Gergiev is everywhere these days. He’s brought his orchestra back to life and to traveling frequently. Now he’s coming to conduct the L.A. Philharmonic for two weeks.

Nothing, we are told, works in Russia anymore.

Nobody, we are also told, works in Russia anymore.

But don’t believe it. The Kirov Opera works. In less than five years, the legendary--but, until recently, somewhat dowdy--opera company of the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg has become one of the most talked about, most widely and regularly traveled and most recorded opera companies in the world.

And no conductor seems to work harder than Valery Gergiev, who heads the Kirov Opera and who will be appearing for the first time with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, as he conducts a two-week mini-festival of Tchaikovsky at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion beginning May 19. Typical of the maestro--who five years ago was almost completely unknown in the West and is now one of the conductors most in demand around the world--these will not be typical Tchaikovsky concerts.

With the exception of the Serenade for Strings, there will be none of the familiar Tchaikovsky. Instead of the inescapably famous First Piano Concerto, there will be the rarely heard Third. Instead of the overly familiar yearning of the “Pathetique” Symphony, there will be the stormy, seldom-played “Manfred.” And instead of “Eugene Onegin,” there will be Tchaikovsky’s little-known last opera, “Iolanta,” given in concert performance and featuring singers from the Kirov.

Gergiev is a conductor very much with a mission. Actually, he is a conductor with several missions, and they include the promotion of neglected Russian music, the indefatigable advancing of the Kirov’s international reputation and that of its singers, the indefatigable pursuit of international currency through touring and recording to keep the Kirov afloat, the further indefatigable international expansion of his own conducting career and, most lately, the advancement of contemporary music. So irrepressible, in fact, is Gergiev that his very name tends to bring, from those who work with him, the contradictory states of fanatical enthusiasm and a quality of eyes glazing over.

This, for instance, is how Gergiev spent two weeks in New York earlier this year: He brought the entire Kirov company to the Brooklyn Academy of Music with the Kirov’s production of Rimsky-Korsakov’s “The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh,” an opera, often called the Russian “Parsifal,” that is a particular cause of Gergiev’s and that had never before been given a major staging in the United States.

But in addition, Gergiev also managed to guest-conduct two subscription weeks with the New York Philharmonic at the same time, back and forth through New York traffic between rehearsals and performances in Manhattan and Brooklyn. On one Saturday, he led a matinee performance of the four-hour “Kitezh” at BAM that ended with just enough time for him to race back to Lincoln Center to conduct the New York Philharmonic that evening and then back to BAM the next afternoon for another “Kitezh.”

After his Kirov compatriots left town, the second week, Gergiev sandwiched in a guest-conducting appearance with the Boston Symphony, rehearsals for which began before his final New York Philharmonic concerts were finished. And the main work in Boston, Shostakovich’s massive “Leningrad” Symphony, was something he had conducted only once before, and that a number of years ago.

So it is hardly a surprise that a meeting with Gergiev in his hotel room at the end of his New York stay was not without activity. There is the phone, ringing from Russia, from Europe, from New York. “You see how my life is,” he says at one point with exasperation. Appointments overlap. A representative from his record company, Philips Classics, brings him a review of the Kirov in New York magazine, which he looks at, struggling over the word peripatetic . He acts pleased to learn that such a word exists in English, one that might have been made for him, and he starts using it immediately.

An interview with Gergiev is unlike one with any other conductor. He tries to avoid them. He says he’s tired of being asked about the finances of the Kirov when he wants to talk only about music. He says he has no time, which is true, but then once he starts talking, he simply doesn’t stop.

An interview with Gergiev, in fact, tends to be mainly about whatever is on his mind at the moment. And right now that seems to be that the conductor is at a crossroads in his career. The peripatetic lifestyle has been taking its toll. At 42, he’s tired. He’s well on his way to having accomplished what he set out to accomplish at the Kirov. He’s practically a hero in St. Petersburg. The Kirov Orchestra is probably the best in Russia now, better than the St. Petersburg Philharmonic or the Bolshoi. Audiences adore him. He’s even a sex symbol; young Russian women swoon at the way he wiggles the fingers of his left hand when he conducts. But life in Russia isn’t easy. There’s no money, and everything is a struggle.

And for someone who is on the road as much as he is, Gergiev doesn’t exactly need another two-week trip to America just now. He especially doesn’t need it in late May, because he is the artistic director of “The Stars of White Nights” Festival in St. Petersburg, which next month will find him conducting, within a span of two weeks, three new opera productions and a number of orchestra concerts, nearly all with repertory new to his orchestra. In July, he will direct a festival that he founded in Mikkeli, Finland. And a listing of summer festivals shows the Kirov popping up in such far-flung cities as Edinburgh, Scotland; Savonlinna, Finland, and Ravenna, Italy.

So why come to Los Angeles? “Ernest Fleischmann. He was the one who always wants me to come as often as possible, and I can tell you he makes it so you agree,” Gergiev says. “You think it over 10 or 15 times, and you think it would be better to spend time learning something new or rehearse or conduct a new production in Europe than to take a trip to Los Angeles. For what reason? To conduct ‘Iolanta’? I already conducted it in London in Albert Hall, which was a big event. I conducted it at home many times in concert, which audiences love. I’ve already recorded it (although Philips has not yet scheduled a release date).”

But, yes, “Iolanta,” and the chance to focus his programs on lesser-known Tchaikovsky, is precisely the attraction. Although the rumor mill is regularly plugging Gergiev into the directorship of this orchestra or that opera company (the question “How long can Gergiev remain at the Kirov?” has practically become a mantra in the music business), and although Gergiev has lately assumed international sophistication (no more the disheveled clothes, uncombed hair and pasty complexion of a couple years ago but now stylish Italian clothes, a handsome trimmed beard and some color), his success has been in great part because of his enormous identification with and passion for Russian music, much of it neglected.

When appointed artistic director of the Mariinsky Theatre in 1988, Gergiev was an obscure young assistant at the company, and the company was a mess. Yet within seven months of taking over, he mounted an inclusive Mussorgsky festival of five operas, some of them in new editions he had commissioned from musicologists.

Then he did the same for Prokofiev, for Tchaikovsky, for Rimsky-Korsakov. Last year he staged Russia’s national opera, “Russlan and Ludmilla,” complete, all five hours of it, which is daring even in Russia. And next fall he will bring the production to San Francisco Opera, which co-produced it and where Gergiev regularly guest-conducts (as he also does with the San Francisco Symphony).

Gergiev also began getting the word out about the Kirov with evangelical zeal. He took his productions of Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov” and “Khovanshchina,” of Tchaikovsky’s “Queen of Spades,” of Prokofiev’s “The Fiery Angel,” of Rimsky’s “Sadko” and now “Kitezh” all over Europe, to Japan and to New York. Philips has practically taken up residency in St. Petersburg, recording for audio and video just about everything Gergiev puts on the stage.

Moreover, when it was impractical for Gergiev to take a production somewhere, he hasn’t hesitated to put it on in concert form, as he has done often with “Boris,” “Iolanta,” “Kitezh” and others.

This evangelical zeal has also translated to Gergiev’s conducting. He prides himself on just how well he and his company know these scores.

But what Gergiev likes to talk about most is the sound. He is, ultimately, a very physical conductor, and much of his appeal both to audiences and the musicians he works with seems to be in his ability to adapt to the physical surroundings. The acoustic setting, the particular singers, the orchestra, the atmosphere, his own needs of the moment, all affect his performances more than they do for most conductors, and he can produce a very different conception of a work under different conditions. But he does seem to always make an orchestra sound Russian.

He says, however, that his conception of sound is not Russian: “I think when you look at old masters like Furtwangler, it also has something to do with understanding what is the orchestral sound. I want to see that on the bottom, the timpani, tuba, contrabasses or bassoons, the bass drum--very important--the character of the piatti (cymbals). There are a million ways of doing it.”

Then comes an example of the spectacular, Joycean Gergiev leaps of subject matter. Turning to the exotic sound world of Rimsky’s youthful symphonic poem “Antar,” which Gergiev had conducted with the New York Philharmonic, he reflects on the differences between Rimsky’s extroverted pathos and the depth of feeling in late Tchaikovsky with its questions of life and death. Mention of them leads inevitably to Mussorgksy (“maybe the most interesting Russian composer”), then Prokofiev (the most interesting for Gergiev).

“I just did the Second Symphony (of Prokofiev) in San Francisco (in the fall),” he says. “And I knew it would be a fiasco, because it is not a symphony that makes people happy. It is so dissonant, it’s so brave, and it’s so revolutionary. But because I did many things in San Francisco, I can’t allow myself to come again and do just that. I would feel bored, and I think, ‘Why should I go?’ It’s 20 hours to fly, and now it matters for me, because I’d rather just have a day off. But I thought, ‘OK, maybe I will be a bad boy.’

“And it was successful. But what does success mean with the public? They always clap even before they have to do it. But you feel when it’s real or when half of the hall is already on its way to its cars. This time, there was a combination of shock and strong musical experience, because there are such beautiful moments in the score, wild score.

“I think, in principle, the 20th Century is a wild century, and that is one reason why I come to America. I find that in America you have danger. You can come and do anything. The orchestras are good. People come to the concerts. They will come even for Prokofiev’s Second Symphony, but you have to be responsible. You have to do it in memorable way, or you feel you are already on your way down.

“It has happened to many, many artists in America. They thought that they were on the top of their triumph. But something was miscalculated with the programming, or the level of intensity or whatever is important, and the importance of performances of the artists can be diminished and diminished, and what you see is no more artist. We don’t call it a market, but in a way it’s like the marketplace; somebody else is coming.

“I’m not really in the market myself because of ‘Iolanta.’ I think that ‘Iolanta’ in Los Angeles is something that I have to do as a music director of the Kirov Opera of the Mariinsky, and because it is something that I really like, and that’s not always necessarily the same.”

That improbable climax on “Iolanta” is not unlike Gergiev’s conducting. One doesn’t always know where he is taking the listener, or why, and there is often the possibility of swerving dangerously off course or crashing, but the intensity and the sense of adventure are unmistakable, and he can finish with a very big bang.

Such qualities have also found their way into Gergiev’s productions with the Kirov. He prides himself on the singers he has developed. Some have already blossomed into major stars, such as baritones Dmitri Hvorostovsky and Sergei Leiferkus and mezzo Olga Borodina. Soprano Galina Gorchakova, who will be appearing in Los Angeles, is probably next in line, and tenor Gegam Grigorian, who will also sing in “Iolanta,” has been attracting attention as well.

All can thank the conditions at the Kirov, which have been ideal for developing a real ensemble company. There had not been, until recently, much planning. Gergiev can change operas or casts on the spur of the moment. If he finds a young singer of promise, he can put that singer onstage almost immediately.

But the company is also becoming more sophisticated and cosmopolitan.

For “White Nights,” for instance, experimental American director Julie Taymor will create a new production of Strauss’ “Salome.” George Tsypin, who works regularly with Peter Sellars (he made the sets for “Pelleas et Melisande” at Music Center Opera recently), will design the sets for Shostakovich’s “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk.” Franco Zeffirelli is the director for a new “Aida,” a co-production with La Scala.

And artists who travel to the Kirov often try to take away a piece of Gergiev with them. When Placido Domingo sang Otello with the company a couple of years ago, he was so impressed with Gergiev that he persuaded the Met to invite Gergiev to conduct a new production of the opera, which was mounted last season for Domingo. Gergiev will return to the Met next season for a new production of “The Queen of Spades,” and the rumor mill has been busy with unsubstantiated reports that the Met would like a much more permanent relationship with Gergiev.

Where all this will lead, Gergiev either doesn’t know or isn’t saying. He admits that he cannot keep up the pace forever, or even for more than another two or three years. And he says that for all his love of the repertory he has fostered, he doesn’t want to do it forever.

“I really want to do contemporary music. I think of living composers extensively. I turn down many of what I call ‘inertial’ invitations for ‘Sadko,’ for ‘Onegin’--believe me, very many. I turn them down, because I think that this is more or less accomplished.

“I do not want to stay in history. I am music director of big institution, so I have to be responsible for my decisions.

“But now my responsibility will be not to speak but to do something. I am looking at opera composers.”

* Valery Gergiev conducts three works by Tchaikovsky with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Music Center, 135 N. Grand Ave. May 19-20, 8 p.m.; May 21, 2:30 p.m. $6-$50. (213) 365-3500.

Gergiev conducts Tchaikovsky’s opera “Iolanta” with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and soloists from the Kirov Opera, also at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. May 25, 26, 27, 8 p.m.; May 28, 2:30 p.m. $6-$50.