PIANOS, ORGAN AND THE MIGHTY PHIL.

Byline: David Mermelstein Correspondent

Thinking about how the Los Angeles Philharmonic will open its 2005-06 season might not have been the first thing on people's minds as they left the Walt Disney Concert Hall last weekend. After all, these were the initial concerts of the 2004-05 season.

And yet the question loomed: Last year, the orchestra unveiled its new hall; this year it inaugurated its massive pipe organ. So how do you follow that?

Well, OK, they've got a year. For now, at least, our appetites are sated. There's certainly no avoiding that organ, which dedicated music lovers could have heard during four programs since last Thursday - including the Los Angeles Master Chorale's season opener Sunday night.

And there's plenty more organ music on the way. Perhaps that explains the decidedly giddy tenor of the Philharmonic's concerts Friday and Saturday, conducted by music director Esa-Pekka Salonen, that featured not just the organ but also a percussion battery that included plumber's pipes and a guiro (anyone know what that is?), six pianos playing simultaneously and a vaudeville act with the unlikely name of Ax, Bronfman, Cheng and Salonen. (Never heard of them? Oh, you will.)

Friday's concert was the orchestra's gala. That once meant well-dressed patrons and serious music (not to get too nostalgic for the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion). Now it seems to mean well-dressed patrons and abundant silliness. Still - what's the phrase? - a good time was had by all.

Richard Strauss' justly forgotten ``Festival Prelude'' introduced the 44-ton, nearly four-story organ, which the audience predictably cooed at. Ensconced amid the pipes, organist Todd Wilson deferred his applause to the instrument; he'd earn his own on Saturday.

Mozart's Concerto for Three Pianos (K. 242) was made for such occasions, especially when soloists like Emanuel Ax, Yefim Bronfman and Helene Grimaud can be secured. But the work serves another purpose: to remind us that even Mozart had bad days. This performance offered generally successful teamwork from three markedly different artists and some warm string playing.

Anything delaying Liszt's ridiculous ``Hexameron'' for six pianos and orchestra must be applauded, but the uncredited frivolity that arrived proved especially dear. In sum: Ax, Bronfman and Gloria Cheng played a one-piano-six-hands version of Schubert's famous ``Serenade.'' Not well, of course, as three people sitting at a piano can't do any music justice. But in this case, getting there was all the fun. Ax and Bronfman, quite adept at slapstick, were not above mocking their girth, while Cheng played the straight man admirably. And when a page-turner was needed, a surprisingly limber Salonen served. (Should this composing-conducting thing not work out, he may have a future in stand-up.)

When the Liszt (a work, in fact, realized by Robert Linn in 1963) finally came, the mood was light, and so its heaviness (unequal parts Rachmaninoff, Bellini and Liszt) went down easier.

Morton Gould's arrangement of Sousa's ``Stars and Stripes Forever,'' also for six pianos and orchestra, might have struck some as oddly jingoistic, but not this crowd. They liked it so much, Salonen led it twice.

Matters were more serious on Saturday, the concert an organ showcase. First, a pair of Bach fugues were juxtaposed, with Wilson alone playing the Toccata and Fugue in D minor and then the Philharmonic performing Leopold Stokowski's orchestral version of the ``Little'' Fugue in G minor. Both were worth hearing, but it was the exquisitely controlled and shaped Philharmonic that really wowed.

Abundant justification for the new instrument, though, came with Lou Harrison's groovy five-movement Concerto for Organ. The piece, an alternately raucous and tender showstopper, uses only four keyboard instruments and enough percussion to keep 10 players busy. Seated at the organ's on-stage console, Wilson was practically break-dancing on those pedals.

Saint-Saens' ``Organ'' Symphony inevitably concluded the concert. The work has its moments, but even on this occasion, its more tedious sections were apparent. Yet how nice that the Philharmonic can finally play it properly.