SALONEN UP TO 'GURRELIEDER'S' CHALLENGE.

Byline: David Mermelstein Correspondent

Schoenberg's ``Gurrelieder'' is a work of gargantuan proportions, requiring five vocal soloists, a speaker, three male choruses, a mixed chorus and an overstuffed orchestra that includes eight flutes, five oboes, seven clarinets, 10 horns, six trumpets, eight trombones, four harps and a collection of percussion instruments to wake the dead.

So when it's performed, it's an event. The Los Angeles Philharmonic first played the piece in 1968 under Zubin Mehta, and Gerard Schwarz led a memorable account in 1990. To that list, we can add Esa-Pekka Salonen's reading, which was performed Sunday afternoon at the Walt Disney Concert Hall.

The work, with its overt emotionalism and unabashed yearnings, is not exactly typical Salonen territory. In fact, these performances marked the first time he'd conducted the piece. But as audiences learned with the ``Tristan'' project late last year, this conductor remains quite capable of surprising us.

In ``Tristan,'' Salonen seized on the music's drama. In ``Gurrelieder,'' he focused on texture and feeling, conjuring dappled musical landscapes and sylvan realms. His ear cocked toward the modern, he elicited impressively unified playing that was lush but never indulgent.

The singers were a mixed bag, with the smaller roles of the Wood Dove, the Jester and the Peasant vigorously and imaginatively sung by mezzo- soprano Lilli Paasikivi, tenor Anthony Dean Griffey and baritone Christopher Maltman, respectively.

The lovers at the center of ``Gurrelieder'' were less winning. Soprano Angela Denoke lent warmth and conviction to Tove but little power. And tenor John Treleaven sounded nasal and occasionally wobbly as Waldemar, his indifferent German frequently slurred.

Only in the last of the work's three parts does the chorus enter, but the Los Angeles Master Chorale, sounding massive and visceral, proved worth the wait.