Ordinary made extraordinary

The Walt Disney Concert Hall is decked out for the holidays. You can have Christmas with Chanticleer, the Master Chorale or Manhattan Transfer. You can join Harry Shearer in a holiday sing-along (is that for real?).

Or you can hear the Los Angeles Philharmonic this weekend offer what on paper looks like a standard-issue, minimally challenging program. No “Nutcracker,” but there is a Mozart piano concerto and Richard Strauss’ shortest, friendliest, most overplayed tone poems -- “Don Juan” and “Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks.” Modern music is quickly dispatched in eight ethereal minutes with Gyorgy Kurtag’s “... quasi una fantasia ....” The pianist is the likable Leif Ove Andsnes. Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts.

It hardly seems like much out of the ordinary. But the greatest gift of art is to show us what we otherwise miss in quotidian life, to help us appreciate that every seat is the best seat in the house when you really pay attention.

Thursday night there was not a single ordinary moment, not in the Strauss, not in the Mozart, certainly not in the Kurtag, not even in the stagehands setting the stage.

Kurtag’s score, written in 1988 for the Berlin Philharmonie (a concert hall, like Disney, with a vineyard layout), is a mini piano concerto for an unconventional ensemble and an unconventional arrangement. It began the second half of the program, and in the front part of the stage were piano, cimbalom, celesta, harp and a lot of skin -- timpani, a bass drum, snares -- along with other percussion.

Heavy metal -- big gongs -- rested on a single riser high at the back of the stage. A handful of string players crowded into the organ loft. Surrounding the audience were, mostly unseen, horns, winds, harmonicas, hand percussion and who knows what.

In a matter of seconds, the Hungarian composer created a spell with nothing more than having the pianist play a downward scale in an atmosphere of mystery. Eerie surround sound seemed to open up the hall to spirit-world influences. As if calling up ghosts, drums pounded like they do at the beginning of Brahms’ First Symphony. But everything evaporated as quickly as it arose, dust to dust.

Then the stagehands appeared. In a process that took longer than Kurtag’s piece, they cleared the stage, lowered the riser, brought out chairs and stands for about a hundred players and repositioned the standard risers to a round of applause.

Not many orchestras would dare allow 10 minutes of dead time mid-concert. But it proved brilliant. Kurtag’s mystifying mood doesn’t leave the room as quickly as the sound does. The Philharmonic trusted its audience and let the score sink in. When Till began his merry pranks, the ear had been conditioned to acceptance.

We have Andsnes, who finishes a two-week residence with the orchestra this weekend, to thank for the Philharmonic’s programming of the Kurtag and for an eloquent performance of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 14 in E flat, K. 449. Commonplace as the important Mozart concertos are, this one, for no good reason, is a little less commonplace. The Philharmonic first played it only two decades ago. It shows up less often on recordings than you might expect.

It has a slow movement that is Mozart at his most angelic, and that otherworldly lyricism prepared the ear for Kurtag’s variety. Andsnes does not fuss. His tone is round, soft-edged. He brings good sense to every line. He allows no artificial sweeteners in his Mozart.

The two Strauss tone poems -- “Don Juan” began the program, “Till” ended it -- were given extraordinary, high-energy performances from Salonen. He threw himself into “Don Juan,” making Strauss’ protagonist a lover possessed. “Till” was a riot of feisty individuality.

The Philharmonic played with an irresistible sense of joy in the fact that it could do anything. Strauss asks for many small solos in both pieces. William Lane, the principal horn, had a good night, revealing Till not just as a merry prankster but one with a mission.

Salonen’s Strauss has become full of incident, where every moment matters, where everything comes alive. Monday the Philharmonic’s music director will be honored in New York as Musical America’s musician of the year. In Los Angeles he is, as he spectacularly proved Thursday night, something rarer and even more important: a musician of the moment.

*

Los Angeles Philharmonic

Where: Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., L.A.

When: 8 p.m. today, 2 p.m. Sunday

Price: $15 to $129

Contact: (323) 850-2000 or www.laphil.com