Philharmonic plans Beethoven festival

Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic will make the orchestra’s 2005-06 season a Beethoven festival, playing all nine symphonies juxtaposed with contemporary works, including two commissioned premieres.

“It’s a great moment to do a Beethoven project in the new hall because our audience will be able to hear these works with a new clarity and a new intensity of sound,” Salonen, the orchestra’s music director, said Sunday from his home in Los Angeles.

It seems to be a Beethoven year even though next season will mark no significant milestone linked to either the composer’s birth or his death.

Christoph Eschenbach and the Philadelphia Orchestra announced last week that they also would survey the complete cycle of symphonies with a mix of new works. Meanwhile, the Minnesota Orchestra and conductor Osmo Vanska recently released the first CD of a planned cycle, even though there are already abundant competing versions on the market.

“I see Beethoven as one of the most radical composers of all times, if not the most radical,” Salonen said. “Some of his works may be the most drastic departures from convention and prevailing tradition in the history of music. If there ever was a composer who cries for new music next to his, that is Beethoven.”

The Los Angeles cycle, which is to begin Sept. 30 and is titled “Beethoven Unbound,” will include works by Henri Dutilleux, Oliver Knussen and Gyorgy Ligeti, as well as newly commissioned pieces by Magnus Lindberg and Anders Hillborg.

“There is no real stylistic or aesthetic line between them and Beethoven because the distance in time is already so great,” Salonen said. “A good enough criterion is that these are very, very good composers. They know which symphonies they are going to be paired with. And if they choose to relate to that somehow, that’s up to them, but we didn’t make that a condition by any means.”

As part of the festival year, members of the orchestra also will play all-Beethoven programs in their chamber music series, while the Juilliard and Emerson string quartets will play the composer’s 16 quartets.

Nonsubscribers will be able to hear all nine symphonies in a special four-concert package. Additional details of the orchestra’s coming season are scheduled to be announced Feb. 8.