Musical diplomats from L.A.

On his trip to Germany last week, George W. Bush canceled a town meeting once it became clear that German public opinion wasn’t going his way. A dislike of a specific U.S. president may not necessarily mean a pervasive German anti-Americanism. After all, American popular culture and fast food are avidly consumed in Germany, as they are in much of the world.

But there are also many in Germany who blame American popular culture and fast food for poisoning minds and bloating bodies. If, for them, Washington is one center of American wrongdoing, Los Angeles, as the entertainment capital of the world, is another.

And that makes the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s weeklong residency in Cologne, beginning Wednesday, of substantial diplomatic importance.

Ostensibly, the Philharmonic will be giving three performances in the Philharmonie, Cologne’s main concert hall, to offer German audiences a taste of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s work with his orchestra. But the presenters are using the occasion to take a broader look at Los Angeles culture. L.A.-centric movies, ranging from the obvious choices, such as “Chinatown,” to recent experimental work by James Benning, will be screened in conjunction with these concerts. An evening will be devoted to L.A. writer James Ellroy. A new German play about Stravinsky, described as being about a Russian making his way in Hollywood, will also be part of the discourse.

The German media treat culture with great seriousness, and this L.A. festival is likely to get quite a bit of attention, coming as it does on the heels of Bush’s visit and the latest Academy Awards ceremony’s cocktail of stage-managed triviality, excess and sentimentality. You can only imagine.

You can only imagine, that is, if you weren’t at Walt Disney Concert Hall over the last two weeks for the series of concerts called “3 x Salonen.” In each of three programs, Salonen paired one of his major scores with a spectacular Philharmonic specialty: Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring,” Berlioz’s “Symphonie Fastastique” and Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony. The atmosphere was electric, the mood celebratory, what with Salonen having just signed a new contract to remain with the orchestra until at least 2008.

What is happening between the Los Angeles Philharmonic and its music director is remarkable, and we do well to share it with the world. Technically, we cannot claim Salonen as a product of our culture. He grew up in Finland, a country with possibly the best music education in the world. He made his career in Europe. But in his dozen years at the helm of the Philharmonic, Los Angeles has transformed Salonen, and he has transformed Los Angeles. So, yes, we can claim him.

Disney Hall, which almost surely would not have been built if Salonen had not been able to generate enough civic enthusiasm for a forward-looking Philharmonic, is his most obvious contribution to the city. But Disney Hall also would not have been built if Los Angeles had not had an enormous influence on Salonen. Living in Los Angeles and raising a family here, interacting with local musicians and forging relationships with such West Coast artists as composer John Adams, director Peter Sellars and video artist Bill Viola have all liberated him.

That liberation can’t be missed in the music he now writes. He first came to Los Angeles as a clever Modernist. His early music is rigorously complex, albeit playful, witty and even possessed of a certain sonic twinkle in its eye. But the three recent orchestral pieces the Philharmonic will play in Cologne -- “Wing on Wing,” “Mania” and “Insomnia” -- are rapt statements by a composer who has let himself go. The rigor is still there, and he is a master of the orchestra. But Salonen has opened himself up to hearing everything around him.

The music doesn’t sound like Radiohead or Adams or anyone else, but those influences are subtly there. The opening up, the listening and reacting to his environment, gives each piece of Salonen’s a distinct character. “Insomnia,” which received its L.A. premiere Thursday night, was written shortly after 9/11, and it was meant to be the haunted music of a sleepless night: A kind of tune, hard to pin down, keeps turning through a restless mind. It’s a big, powerful statement.

“Mania,” a chamber cello concerto, is the music of a brilliant mind, fresh, wide awake and operating a little too fast for its own good. The score bounces off the walls and off the super cellist Anssi Kartunen, for whom it was written. “Wing on Wing” is Salonen’s love song to Disney Hall, a love song wise enough, true enough and Finnish enough to be tinged with sadness.

Other Salonen music found its way into the past weeks as well. The Sunday before last, California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks presented a chamber program of Salonen’s music in its Samuelson Chapel. The roads were flooded, but the chapel was packed. Faculty members gave persuasive performances of some of those early scores. Gloria Cheng was on hand to premiere three new piano preludes: “Libellula Meccanica,” Chorale and Invenzione, all dazzling, brilliant, inventive pieces. Cheng made them sparkle, even the nearly unplayably difficult Invenzione, which Salonen tossed off on a transatlantic flight.

Salonen’s greatest test in Germany, though, will probably not be his music. And it probably won’t be his dazzling Stravinsky or Berlioz either -- the Germans might even note a bit of Hollywood in all the technicolor of the Philharmonic’s playing. Bruckner’s Seventh, holy music in Germany, is the piece by which they may ultimately judge him.

Thursday in Disney, the Bruckner glowed in long luminous lines. When Salonen first started conducting Bruckner with the Philharmonic, he was meddlesome. Now the fuss is gone. In opening him up to new musical experiences, Los Angeles appears to have also opened him up to new experiences of old music. He now lets Bruckner, in all his majesty, be.

If the Germans understand the full implications of that, and I suspect they will, international relations could improve. And it amazes me that neither Washington nor, for that matter, City Hall, seems to get it.