NORDIC PROGRAM IS COLD COMFORT.

Byline: David Mermelstein Correspondent

IF YOU'VE BEEN feeling winter's chill lately, you're not alone. On Thursday, Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic in a program that practically proclaimed, ``Put on those winter coats and start shoveling snow.'' Or at least that's how it struck those who link the music of Scandinavia with matters meteorological.

Not that everything on the program - music of Sibelius (Finnish), Wilhelm Stenhammar (Swedish) and Grieg (Norwegian) - evoked the great white north. Indeed, Stenhammar's irresistible Serenade, composed in 1911 but only now receiving its Philharmonic premiere, sounded positively verdant at times.

The half-hour piece can ramble, but its various episodes are distinguished by ample lyricism, poignancy and wit. Especially beguiling are the infectious Scherzo and the often lachrymose Notturno, which Salonen and the Philharmonic phrased touchingly. In general, conductor and orchestra played with gusto and heart, and the music allowed for some impressive obbligato efforts, most notably concertmaster Martin Chalifour (molten in the Overtura) and principal clarinetist Lorin Levee (melancholic in the Canzonetta).

Grieg's familiar A-minor Piano Concerto, with the composer's countryman Leif Ove Andsnes as soloist, was the evening's highlight for many in the audience. Andsnes, midway through a two-week, nine-concert residency with the Philharmonic, lately has reclaimed this war horse as serious music, its popularity and easy appeal having compromised it in the minds of some.

With pearly tone and laudable dexterity, Andsnes offered a performance that was committed but not rhapsodic, limpid without being dewy and intense but never melodramatic. And though he fully revealed his virtuosity, showboating was absent from his reading, which reached its zenith in the extraordinary transparency he achieved near the end of the finale, when his fingers seemed to float above the keys.

Yet without Salonen and the orchestra's vigorous and committed support, the performance would not have been as compelling. Too often, orchestras relax during concertos, leaving soloists to carry the freight. Not here, where all concerned dug in to make the kind of music that rightly gets crowds cheering.

That same devotion characterized the program's opener, Sibelius' ``Finlandia,'' another work whose familiarity breeds contempt in certain circles. Here, the music was gratifyingly fierce and unusually taut, with the brasses not so much blaring as biting. Salonen might have savored the music's richness a bit more in the briskest sections, but then the contrast with the work's more meditative passages would have been less pronounced. And isn't a warm hearth all the more appreciated after we come in from the cold?

ESA-PEKKA SALONEN AND THE LOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC, WITH PIANIST LEIF OVE ANDSNES - Three and one half stars

What: Salonen leads the orchestra in an all-Scandinavian program, with Andsnes playing the Grieg Piano Concerto.

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

When: 2 p.m. today.

Tickets: $15 to $125. [phone] or www.laphil.com.

In a nutshell: The Phil welcomes winter bracingly, with two Nordic favorites and one rarity.

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Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts an all-Scandinavian program with the L.A. Phil today.