A busy season for the L.A. Phil

Three multi-concert festivals will highlight the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s 2007-08 season, announced officially Tuesday at Walt Disney Concert Hall.

After a gala concert Oct. 4, led by music director Esa-Pekka Salonen and featuring soprano Renee Fleming, the season will open Oct. 5 with the initial program of “Sibelius Unbound,” Salonen’s first survey of the Finnish composer’s seven symphonies and other works, plus music by composers influenced by him.

The second major project, also beginning in October, will be a youth orchestra festival showcasing the Sibelius Academy Festival Symphony from Finland, the Simon Bolivar National Youth Orchestra from Venezuela and the UBS Verbier Festival Orchestra from Switzerland.

Beginning in January 2008, St. Louis Symphony music director David Robertson will conduct the third festival, “Concrete Frequency,” a multidisciplinary undertaking exploring how music and cities define one another.

Other visiting artists next season will include tenor Ben Heppner, making his Disney Hall debut in songs by Sibelius; pianist Andras Schiff, beginning a two-year survey of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas; and composer, conductor and pianist Thomas Ades, returning for a second series of programs sponsored by the orchestra.

The Philharmonic will also mark its 20th year in association with Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Steven Stucky, the orchestra’s new-music advisor. In addition to presenting the world premiere of his “Radical Light,” the Philharmonic will premiere his orchestration of Stravinsky’s ballet score “Les Noces.”

Also on the schedule are the first West Coast performances of Salonen’s new Piano Concerto plus the world premieres of Oliver Knussen’s Cello Concerto and of works by Harold Meltzer, Gabriela Lena Frank and Terry Riley.

The Finnish-born Salonen said Tuesday that growing up, he hated Sibelius’ music and that one reason he went to Italy to study composition was “that I knew that Italy was a place that Sibelius was not played.”

But after he chanced on a pocket score of the composer’s Fifth Symphony, he did some reevaluating. “I realized this music, even on the page, looks unlike any other music,” he said. “Studying it, I realized there’s so much that I hadn’t seen, there’s so much I hadn’t heard, because of the fact that in Finland, it was everywhere, and it was right in my face.”

The Sibelius-influenced works to be played in “Sibelius Unbound” will include Salonen’s “Wing on Wing” and the rescheduled U.S. premiere of Kaija Saariaho’s “La Passion de Simone.”

The latter, an oratorio based on the life of 20th century French philosopher and mystic Simone Weil, was composed for soprano Dawn Upshaw, who was forced to withdraw from the Vienna premiere in November because of treatment for breast cancer. She will sing the work in Los Angeles on Oct. 5-7. Peter Sellars will be the stage director. Other works by Saariaho, who is also Finnish, will be performed at a Green Umbrella concert.

The Philharmonic will take “Sibelius Unbound” to Europe, Oct. 29 to Nov. 12, with residencies in London and Paris and concerts in Barcelona, Spain; Madrid; and Lisbon.

The “Concrete Frequency” concerts will include the world premiere of a Philharmonic commission by composer Michael Gordon and filmmaker Bill Morrison and a one-time collaboration between Portuguese fado singer Mariza and architect Frank Gehry, who will transform the Disney Hall stage into a taverna for the event.

Soloists in the youth orchestra programs will include pianists Juho Pohjonen and Martha Argerich. Gustavo Dudamel, who will lead the Venezuelan youth orchestra, also will lead two weeks of subscription concerts with the Philharmonic.

Among the visiting groups will be the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Hesperion XXI and the New London Consort, which will present Monteverdi’s “L’Orfeo” conducted by Philip Pickett and staged by Jonathan Miller in honor of the opera’s 400th anniversary.

Lionel Bringuier, the Philharmonic’s new assistant conductor, will lead a Green Umbrella concert in October and youth, neighborhood and community concerts throughout the season.

chris.pasles@latimes.com