SALONEN-LED PHILHAMONIC TAKES STRAVINSKY TO SIMPATICO HEIGHTS.

Byline: Donna Perlmutter Special to the Daily News

Every once in a while an orchestra gets to luxuriate in the spotlight and not kowtow to an outsider soloist.

Thursday was such a night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion: Esa-Pekka Salonen led the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and together they turned their sights to classicism and its modern renovation, neoclassicism.

The programming - two Stravinsky works wrapped around Mozart's Symphony No. 40 - was instructive. It showed, with predictable clarity, that what began in the 18th century as a model of symmetry, grace and harmonic balance still could be traced to its origins 200 years later - albeit with a tone of jaggedness and a deliciously spiky wit.

But if anyone was taking bets on which composer would win out with Salonen on the podium, Stravinsky was the foregone conclusion.

After all, there is a natural simpatico between a conductor and a composer who share the same century, much less the same environs. (While World War II raged on, the Russian Francophile lived right here in Los Angeles, where he wrote parts of the very works played Thursday).

Salonen opened with the earlier of the two, the Symphony in C, and went eagerly to the task. His orchestra, which was in fine French fettle, delivered a supple, spirited, cheeky account of the work, elucidating in snappy fashion how one bar begins only to have another interject, how a dialogue ensues, complete with statement and retort. The whole thing was rendered with urbane garrulousness - a delight, if one ignores a slight contretemps between applause (premature) and the finale's required moment of silence.

On a much grander scale and with augmented forces, Salonen closed with the Symphony in Three Movements, Stravinsky's ode to the war. Here he gave vent to its rhythmic aggression and crackling momentousness. But somehow it's hard to think of such suave bombast as related to war while Shostakovich's realistically bleak visions, for instance, are around.

As to the Mozart, sandwiched between, Salonen put all technical refinements and physical properties in place - with contours that showed the highs, the lows, the vehement, the soft-spoken, the pompous marches, the gentle minuets. But it was the work of an engineer, not the outpourings of a soul and surely not enough to keep such well-worn music from falling into the unyielding grooves of familiarity.

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Photo Esa-Pekka Salonen Focused on classicism