CAPTURING THE FLAVOR OF LIGETI.

Byline: - Reed Johnson 

The first time he heard Gyorgy Ligeti's music, Esa-Pekka Salonen, quite frankly, went ape - which made perfect sense, under the circumstances.

The occasion? A school field trip, circa 1969, to see Stanley Kubrick's ``2001: A Space Odyssey.'' The participants? An impressionable Finnish schoolboy named Esa-Pekka Salonen and his classmates.

What they saw, of course, was a visionary sci-fi fable about human destiny, including a memorable scene in which a group of frenzied primates paw a giant black monolith.

But no less powerful than the images was the accompanying soundtrack: a haunting, buzzing chorus of barely human voices that sounded as if it had been beamed in from another galaxy.

It was one of Salonen's earliest exposures to modern classical music, namely Ligeti's landmark ``Requiem'' (1963-65), ``Atmospheres'' (1961) and the stratospheric ``Lux aeterna.''

``That was the first time I heard Ligeti,'' the Los Angeles Philharmonic's music director recalls, ``and it kind of changed my life, right there and then, because it was like a bomb, you know?''

The shock waves from that first encounter will reverberate during the next few weeks in Los Angeles as Salonen and the L.A. Philharmonic present the ``Around Ligeti'' festival, a survey of works by the influential Hungarian composer who turns 75 this year.

The festival continues with tonight's performance of the ``Requiem,'' provocatively paired with Bach's ``Brandenburg Concerto No. 3'' and Haydn's ``Symphony No. 49 (`La passione')'' at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

During the next few weeks, through May 22, local audiences will receive a comprehensive overview of a composer whose densely fabricated sonic environments have pointed a new direction for post-World War II classical music. Among the works presented will be the West Coast premiere of ``Mysteries of the Macabre'' a musical portrait of a madman from Ligeti's bleakly absurdist opera ``Le Grand Macabre,'' which Salonen has conducted in Europe. Salonen also has been helming Sony Classics' new Ligeti edition of CDs.

Asked why he's devoting such a large chunk of the L.A. Phil's season to a single artist, the conductor doesn't hesitate.

``There are lots of reasons, but the main reason is that he is a fantastic, wonderful composer, a creator of sounds that are unique. And a composer whose music is incredibly beautiful, very exciting, very varied, never boring and kind of amazing.''

Born in 1923 to Hungarian Jewish parents in Transylvania (present-day Romania), Ligeti spent the Nazi occupation in a forced labor camp; the rest of his family perished. After the war he studied and worked in Budapest, Hungary, fleeing during the Soviet invasion of 1956. Since then, he has lived mostly in Germany and Austria, with a 1972 foray to Stanford University, where he was a visiting professor and composer-in-residence.

Though some regard Ligeti's music as massive and inscrutable - sort of like the monolith in ``2001'' - Salonen contends that the sounds themselves can take listeners straight to the heart of Ligeti's unusual cosmos.

``The sound of great cuisine is the great raw materials, I mean the great ingredients, you know, the freshest fish and the freshest vegetables,'' Salonen says. ``And Ligeti uses the freshest fish and the freshest vegetables. And then, in addition to that, he's a very skillful chef.

``But it's the ingredients itself, which is the sounds, which are absolutely fascinating. And it's also accessible, you know, it's not the sort of die-hard, avant-garde (music) that leaves you utterly confused. This is something that you can actually get, immediately.''

For more information on the ``Around Ligeti'' festival, call [phone].

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Photo: The L.A. Philharmonic presents ``Around Ligeti,'' a survey of works by influential Hungarian composer Gyorgy Ligeti.