Matinee Maestro

'We need to reach out to people who, because of cultural reasons, wouldn't have considered going to a symphony performance in downtown Los Angeles," says Esa-Pekka Salonen, the new, Finnish-born music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Unlike the great conductors who have preceded him (Zubin Mehta and Andre Previn), Salonen views his orchestral challenge primarily in terms of his ability to make symphony music pertinent and appealing to the city's increasingly Asian, African-American, and Hispanic populace.

In Europe, where he's principal conductor of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and principal guest conductor of London's Philharmonia Orchestra, the 34-yearold Salonen is treated more like a matinee idol than a maestro. That's partly the result of his chiseled good looks, but also because he's a risk-taking visionary adept at modernizing Philharmonic performances.

"I don't think we can play music from this century as if it were written by any historical composer. Instead of placing contemporary repertory into a contemporary-music ghetto, I combine it with classical programs and more educational things," he says. Salonen's interpretation of Mahler's Symphony No. 3 is the centerpiece of his October 8 Philharmonic debut.

JOHN VILLANI