LONG TIME, NO HEAR AFTER AN 18-YEAR ABSENCE, MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS RETURNS TO L.A. PHIL WITH MAHLER UNDER HIS BATON.

Byline: David Mermelstein Correspondent

When Michael Tilson Thomas walks onto the Walt Disney Concert Hall stage to conduct the Los Angeles Philharmonic on Thursday night, audiences will understand if his first steps are a little tentative. It's not that he hasn't conducted the Philharmonic before, but rather that it's been awhile - 18 years to be precise.

A native Angeleno, Thomas was the Philharmonic's principal guest conductor from 1981 to 1985 and a beloved local presence for years before that. But he hasn't led his hometown orchestra since then. ``It's been long enough to conceive, give birth to and train a new pop star,'' he said during a recent telephone interview from his home in San Francisco.

Of course, Thomas, who turns 59 this month, hasn't exactly had much free time during the past two decades. For the past nine years, he's been the music director of the San Francisco Symphony, a position in which he's garnered nearly universal praise, both in the city and outside it. Then there's his work with the New World Symphony, a training orchestra based in Miami that Thomas co-founded in the late 1980s and to which he still devotes considerable time. In April, he'll bring the orchestra to Carnegie Hall for several concerts. And let's not forget Thomas' years as principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, from 1988 to 1995, years in which he honed an international reputation.

Thomas returns to the Philharmonic a changed man, musically and in other ways, according to Anthony Tommasini, the chief music critic of The New York Times.

``He's undergone tremendous growth,'' Tommasini says. ``He's a very probing and interesting musician. He's admitted that he's settled down, that he's tempered his wild side, both personally and professionally. He's mellowed in a good way. He combines the best from his youth and current maturity now. He's vital and dynamic. He thinks like a composer, which he is.''

It's fitting, then, that Thomas will lead the Philharmonic in music by Gustav Mahler, one of the most celebrated composer-conductors of all, in Symphony No. 6.

``My life changed dramatically after hearing Mahler's works,'' Thomas recalls. ``I was one person before I heard them and a different person afterward. What touched me were the lonely spaces in the music and the Yiddishkeit and mordancy in the music, which was familiar to me. The music's artfulness and characterization has maintained my interest. Mahler's symphonies are really like observations of a whole musical culture. They're highbrow, lowbrow and middlebrow all at once.''

The Sixth Symphony is an especially daunting challenge. Titled ``The Tragic,'' it takes listeners on a harrowing musical journey, using the mammoth orchestral forces for which Mahler is famous to convey brutal truths amid aural splendor.

``The Sixth Symphony is one of the most high-energy, shattering, unflinching observations of the obsessive-destructive urge,'' Thomas says. ``It's full of driving march rhythms and shrieking musical confrontations. Unlike something like Beethoven's Ninth, which begins in a stormy place but ends in a happy one, this symphony begins in a stormy place and ends with a searing and pessimistic conclusion. It's only heartening to think that Mahler could understand these things as he did and not go and blow his brains out, but rather write a symphony.''

As if that weren't enough to think about, Thomas will be leading an orchestra that is simultaneously full of old friends and new faces. And just as he's grown artistically in the intervening years, so has the Philharmonic. ``I'm looking forward to making music again with this orchestra,'' Thomas says. ``I've been admiring the orchestra's triumphs in recent years, and I'm looking forward to conducting a no-holds-barred piece like the Mahler Sixth.''

Given his eagerness, one wonders why Thomas let his bond with the Philharmonic lapse in the first place. Rumors abound as to why he and the orchestra went their separate ways for so long, but most accounts of the break mention a quarrel between the conductor and Ernest Fleischmann, the Philharmonic's former managing director and a formidable presence on the local music scene even today.

Thomas admits that relations between the two were strained. ``Ernest and I didn't see eye to eye on all issues, but so what,'' he said. ``Ernest is a tremendous doer, and all people like that will engender controversy. They wouldn't be who they are without that.''

Fleischmann describes the rupture more specifically. ``There was a major misunderstanding,'' he says. ``I think Michael was upset that his tenure as one of our two principal guest conductors was ended. But that was entirely the decision of our then-music director, Andre Previn, who felt we didn't need two principal guest conductors, and who instructed me to inform Michael of that. And Michael has blamed me for it, and that goes with the job. But I cannot plead mea culpa in this one.''

Previn, who began his tenure at the Philharmonic just as Thomas' stint concluded, disputes Fleischmann's recollection. ``Ernest is not exactly what anyone would call a fountain of truth,'' he said via telephone from his home in Munich. Previn describes himself as a longtime friend and supporter of Thomas and speaks freely of his antipathy toward Fleischmann. ``Ernest is the most devious man. If this weren't quite so insane, it would be funny,'' Previn says.

Whatever the history, Fleischmann only praises Thomas now. ``He's quite an extraordinary musician with a voracious appetite for music of all kinds,'' Fleischmann says of Thomas. ``Michael has a tremendous intellect. In many ways, he has the ideal combination for a conductor: a fine mind, musical knowledge and heart.

And those feelings are echoed by Deborah Borda, who currently has Fleischmann's old Philharmonic job. ``Michael was one of the first people I wanted to book,'' she says. ``I admire his daring. There's an emotional aspect to his conducting that is distinctly different from his remarkable intellectual gifts, and I think that's what makes him so fascinating.''

Aside from the thrill of again conducting an orchestra he was once closely associated with, Thomas says he has mixed feelings about returning to L.A., even for just a few days. ``I sense the presence of lots of ghosts in cities like New York and L.A.,'' he says. ``There are people who were very much part of my life but who are no longer there now. That's endearing and warm but also a little bit lonely and scary. So those are two forces that I'm always balancing.''

MAHLER'S SYMPHONY NO. 6

What: Michael Tilson Thomas conducts the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Where: Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., Los Angeles.

When: 8 p.m. Thursday and Friday, 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

Tickets: $15 to $120. Call the L.A. Philharmonic at [phone], or Ticketmaster at [phone]; laphil.com or ticketmaster.com.

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Michael Tilson Thomas: ``My life changed dramatically after hearing Mahler's works. I was a different person afterwards.''