A Beethoven freshness test

In anticipation of an adored composer’s coming 250th birthday, Mozart mania has begun infecting the classical music world. And several major orchestras in America have found an antidote: Beethoven.

For the Los Angeles Philharmonic this season, the remedy is “Beethoven Unbound,” which centers on Esa-Pekka Salonen’s conducting Beethoven’s nine symphonies interspersed with new or recent symphonic works to remind us that this composer was a revolutionary. The series began in Walt Disney Concert Hall on Thursday night with a gala (tickets $1,500 and up) featuring the film star Ed Harris reading from Beethoven’s letters and pianist Evgeny Kissin as soloist in the “Emperor” Concerto. Friday, for the first regular concert of the season, Henri Dutilleux’s “The Shadows of Time,” a 1997 memorial to Anne Frank, was inserted between the first two Beethoven symphonies.

Beethoven, as orchestras well know, perennially enjoys good business. The previous week, Kissin had played the “Emperor” for a New York Philharmonic gala that left the orchestra $3 million richer. The Russian pianist couldn’t be in two places at the same time, so that same night, the Philadelphia Orchestra selected Andre Watts to play the “Emperor” for its season-opening gala.

Like our Philharmonic, the Philadelphians are also surveying the canonical nine under their music director, Christoph Eschenbach, in pairings with contemporary music (and the two orchestras are sharing a new piece by Magnus Lindberg; its premiere is this week at Disney). James Levine has made Beethoven and Schoenberg the theme of his second season at the Boston Symphony. The San Francisco Symphony beat everyone to the punch in June when Michael Tilson Thomas paired a new timpani concerto by William Kraft with Beethoven’s Ninth.

So what will set the L.A. Philharmonic apart? Mainly, Salonen. He is no stranger to Beethoven, but his celebrity rests elsewhere, with later music. As his stature rises, though, Beethoven looms ever larger. More important, Beethoven demands a regular coming-to-terms-with of all musicians and composers, and Salonen has stepped up to the plate.

It might seem entirely in character for Salonen that he is emphasizing Beethoven’s radicalism. In a quote prominently featured on the Philharmonic’s promotional material, he calls Beethoven “one of the most radical composers of all time.” But given the general familiarity of Beethoven’s music, that radicalism isn’t always easy to convey. Beethoven heard in the context of new music, meanwhile, can remind us of just how comfortable we are with the old.

Interestingly, at both Thursday’s gala and the following night’s symphony program, Salonen seemed far more intent on making music than on making points. The Philharmonic music director is not a member of Austrian conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s radical-fringe Beethoven Party. He is no more extreme a Beethovenian than Tilson Thomas, Eschenbach or Levine. His Beethoven is neither more nor less timely than that of Simon Rattle, Claudio Abbado or John Eliot Gardiner, all of whom can make you feel as though they are delivering their goods farm fresh.

Salonen’s Beethoven simply is. He gives it to you straight. Not straight from the horse’s mouth -- those who claim that clairvoyant trick sometimes have bridges in Brooklyn to sell as well. He doesn’t fuss. Yet he doesn’t miss anything. The performances over these two nights sounded mostly terrific -- exciting, engaging and, yes, fresh, or at least as fresh as something more than two centuries old can remain.

To say that folks Thursday night got their money’s worth with the second “Leonora” Overture alone probably depends on how much money you have. Top prices were $10,000 (dinner included, along with a tax deduction). The overture lasts a dozen minutes. But from its opening chords, voiced with a draw-you-in-and-hold-you-there-for-theduration richness, this was a performance of complete authority. The offstage trumpet -- freedom’s voice -- was something politicians should learn to package. Seats behind the stage and those high up were, happily, donated to students. The youngsters were visibly thrilled.

Galas are galas. Socializing and celebrity come first. Thursday, Harris assumed little on his listeners’ part, but readings -- even heavy-handed ones -- of some of the most moving letters in music history can’t help but be moving themselves. Excerpts from the First and Seventh symphonies were enticing.

Then, the “Emperor,” and the question: Why Kissin? He’s got a beautiful touch, great technique and the ability to make a melody sing. But this celebrated pianist resides in his own world. Time moves as differently for him as it does on a passing spaceship in the Einsteinian space-time continuum. Salonen didn’t indulge him, as Lorin Maazel reportedly did in New York, but it hardly mattered. Memories of Mitsuko Uchida playing the Beethoven piano concertos in Disney Hall last season in a state of total engagement with conductor, orchestra and audience have not faded.

In the two early symphonies Friday, Salonen more fully revealed the virtues of the best of the gala. The First had a classical touch: sharp attacks, disarming rhythmic vitality and, in the humorous lead-up to the last movement, charm and finesse. Still, it was in the Second -- which uses larger forces, making for a bigger sound and consequently more immediacy -- that Salonen was most in his exhilarating element.

The relevance of Dutilleux’s score to Beethoven was unexplained. But the piece itself required no explanation. It is special.

In a rambling, bewildering but nonetheless fascinating pre-concert talk, Robert Winter, the Beethoven series’ scholar in residence, suggested that Beethoven was the ultimate goal-directed composer. Dutilleux, an 89-year-old French master of vividly shaded instrumental color and eloquent expressivity, is just the opposite. His music floats in a sonic world of its own.

But Dutilleux is no Kissin. He is the model of the engaged musician. “The Shadows of Time,” in six short movements, conveys the irrationality of evil through the contemplation of beauty. At the point where Anne Frank’s innocence is evoked, three boy sopranos (Eugene Olea, Sean Sullivan and Josiah Yiu) magically conveyed Dutilleux’s, dare I say it, Mozartean gifts.

The Philharmonic played its Beethoven with appropriate fervor. In the Dutilleux, the fervor was channeled into equally appropriate rapture.