Salonen leaves for Sweden

Los Angeles Philharmonic music director Esa-Pekka Salonen left Wednesday to conduct a memorial service for his friend Anna Lindh, the Swedish foreign minister who died Sept. 11 after being stabbed repeatedly in a Stockholm department store.

Salonen was honoring a special appeal from the Swedish government to conduct the Stockholm Chamber Orchestra, which he led from 1985 to 1995, at the memorial today. He was to conduct Sibelius’ “The Death of Melisande,” -- part of the Finnish composer’s suite of music written to accompany a production of Maurice Maeterlinck’s famous play “Pelleas and Melisande” -- with Anne Sofie von Otter as the soprano soloist.

The public memorial was to be telecast live in Europe.

-- Chris Pasles