Mustonen’s Personal Premiere : Pianist to debut concerto tonight that composer dedicated to him.

Olli Mustonen, the 32-year-old Finnish pianist, reckons that he was 13 when he first heard the music of Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin, whose Fifth Piano Concerto he premieres tonight with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Esa-Pekka Salonen’s baton.

“From the first, I liked Shchedrin’s original mind,” said Mustonen via telephone from France. “But I didn’t actually play any of his work until more recently.”

In fact, it was less than five years ago that Mustonen tackled Shchedrin’s Fourth Piano Concerto (1992).

“I was absolutely excited. I could only say compliments,” recalled the 66-year-old composer, on first hearing Mustonen play. “I could not correct anything, which doesn’t happen often,” he said from his home in Munich, where he has lived since the mid-’90s.

The two met in Helsinki, at about the same time Mustonen began playing the Fourth. “There was immediately mutual affection,” said the pianist. In short order, Mustonen was kidding Shchedrin about writing a concerto especially for him.

“I told him that Beethoven and Prokofiev each wrote five piano concertos and so should he,” said Mustonen laughingly. Eventually, the pianist prevailed. The new concerto, dedicated to Mustonen, was finished this summer.

Shchedrin is best known in America for his boisterous “Carmen Ballet” (1967), written for his wife, legendary Bolshoi ballerina Maya Plisetskaya. Critics have heard everything in his music from 12-tone technique to jazz--the words “playful” and “hard to categorize” recur in discussions of his scores.

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For Mustonen, the chief appeal of Shchedrin’s music lies in its richness. “There’s a lot of contemporary music that I find appealing at first, but less so the more I hear it,” said the pianist. “In Shchedrin’s music, the opposite is true: It is difficult at first, but it repays repeated listenings.”

The pianist describes the Fifth Concerto, composed in the traditional three-movement form, as a mixture of light and dark forces. “Shchedrin’s music is often gloomy, but this concerto also has a lot of humanity, optimism and hope,” he said, noting that the music reminds him of Sibelius, quite the compliment coming from a Finn.

Mustonen said he was particularly excited by the “incredible, very difficult” third-movement cadenza that crowns the concerto. “Of course, Rodion is such a good pianist himself, it is naturally well written for the piano,” he said.

Shchedrin likens the finale to Ravel’s “Bolero,” only faster. And he said that when he was writing the concerto, he imagined Mustonen’s hands, fingers and silhouette. “For a composer, it’s very exciting to create a piece for someone you adore,” he said.

Naturally, the composer hopes that his music will please audiences, though he recognizes that new scores often don’t find favor with the public.

“A lot of modern music has lost contact with the people. I hope that my music is not old-fashioned, but also that it is not abstract,” Shchedrin said. “Music is a biological process. It is not just writing down notes.”

Salonen, who has conducted hundreds of premieres during the past two decades, calls the Fifth Concerto “somewhat conventional in form; less so in content.”

“Shchedrin is quite an original composer despite his clearly belonging to a distinct Russian tradition that stretches from Prokofiev onward,” he said. “He’s a master of the instrument, by which I mean the orchestra.”

The premiere landed in Los Angeles because Salonen and Mustonen are old friends. Indeed, the pianist recalls that, during his childhood in Helsinki, his parents returned from a student concert praising another young Finnish musician, a French horn player--Salonen. Twenty years on, the conductor is happy to return the compliment, calling Mustonen “a very creative musical thinker and performer.”

That creativity has earned Mustonen some sharp rebukes, however. His highly personalized style of playing, typically characterized by a battery of florid hand gestures, not infrequently arouses critical ire, even if most observers acknowledge an underlying seriousness at the heart of Mustonen’s musicianship.

But the pianist coolly defends his distinctive stage manner. “I do it as something to inspire myself,” said Mustonen of his swooping movements at the keyboard. “A good comparison is tennis: The impulse is short, but there is a certain amount of control. It’s almost like a ballet of hands. If you play for two hours, it’s more economical to play this way. Gravity is also an ally. And sometimes these motions are mini-exercises.”

The ultimate point, said Mustonen, is “to be one with the vibrations in the piano.”

Given Mustonen’s eccentric habits, it should come as no surprise that his keyboard heroes are also self-assured individualists. Glenn Gould, Josef Hofmann, Vladimir Horowitz and Sergei Rachmaninoff are favorites. And among living pianists, Mustonen is particularly enamored of Radu Lupu and Andras Schiff.

A composer himself, Mustonen prefers to be called a musician, not just a pianist. “I very much like the word ‘musician,’ ” he said. “It encompasses everything I do, including conducting and teaching.”

Shchedrin regards Mustonen as a “fantastic” conductor, though it should be noted that Mustonen is in the process of recording an all-Shchedrin orchestral album for the Ondine label. Still, the composer’s praise of the pianist, whom he compares to Rachmaninoff, is clearly the product of genuine affection.

Mustonen once intended to become a biologist, but his musical talent was evident early. Though his first instrument was the harpsichord, he took up the piano by age 7. At 10, he started studying composition, and by 12, he performed a piano concerto of his own with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra.

“I am influenced by everything I’ve ever heard, both positive and negative,” the pianist said of his wide-ranging endeavors.

Yet until now, Mustonen’s eventful career has never brought him to this point: Shchedrin’s concerto marks the first time that the pianist will premiere a major work.

“It’s something I’ve been waiting for a long time,” said Mustonen. “And this kind of interaction, between a composer and an artist, is crucial for the vitality of music.”

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Mustonen plays Shchedrin’s Fifth Piano Concerto, tonight and Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 2:30 p.m., Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., $10 to $70. (213) 365-3500.