An Ode to Los Angeles : Esa-Pekka Salonen’s ‘LA Variations’ is a vibrant departure for an artist known for cool abstraction.

“LA” because he lives here and he wrote it specifically for his orchestra. “Variations” because that’s the form of the piece. No fancy title. No special meanings. No ambiguities.

That is the way Esa-Pekka Salonen, speaking to a preconcert audience, described his new piece, “LA Variations,” which was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and given its first performance Thursday night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. He didn’t really need to say much more.

“LA Variations” is a happy event. It is a proud statement, its composer wrote in his program note, of “the virtuosity and power of my orchestra.” It is a piece, Salonen has also said, that demonstrates finally the not-always easy assimilation of a “Finnish boy” into multicultural, freeway-obsessed Los Angeles.

And containing what the formerly cool, abstract composer says is his most joyous music, it also sounds very much the piece of a proud father whose composition habits have dramatically changed now that he has two young daughters. No longer is his first thought of the day about complex hexachords, Salonen recently told Gramophone magazine, but rather “who the hell is jumping up and down on my stomach at 6 o’clock in the morning.” Even Salonen’s description of the specific variations uses a kind of musical baby talk--Big Chord, Big Machine.

Indeed, “LA Variations” begins with a couple of those complex six-note chords but instead of making stern 12-tone music out of them, jumps up and down. The chords themselves are introduced in wonderful upward sweeps and arrive with a big, lush noise. They fragment into sprightly themes that have a folk-music quality. And the piece takes off as a kind of concerto for orchestra.

“LA Variations” sounds original in great part because of the brilliant orchestration. Salonen knows what his concertmaster and first trumpet can do and then puts them together in ways other composers without such players on hand would likely never imagine.

But one also senses the composer actively looking to sources for inspiration as he attempts to lighten his style. At one point the piece pays specific tribute to Sibelius, but there are also less specific influences. Lutoslawski seems to have been a model for the clarity of form and the immediacy of the sound. Ligeti’s luminous orchestral palate probably gave Salonen the ideas for some of his more imaginative sonic effects. Stravinsky and Nielsen don’t sound too far under the surface. The use of a synthesizer in the background to add a bit of glitz may have come from knowing John Adams; Elliott Carter may have shown the way for some of the gorgeous and affecting high violin passages.

Still, Salonen puts it all together in his own way. There is a rhythm of activity and a love for acrobatic complexities that are his hallmark. And there is the sheer exhilaration of providing at least a thrill a minute during the 19-minute piece from a virtuoso orchestra that he knows intimately.

And the timing couldn’t have been much better. On an evening when much of the world was hearing more bad news about Los Angeles, as the slaying of Ennis Cosby was being reported, this kind of celebration of the city’s energy and creativity proved all the more necessary.

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That the audience loved “LA Variations” is hardly surprising. There is nothing to equal the meaningful experience of hearing a new piece of its time and place, made by the orchestra and its music director, something exceedingly rare in modern orchestral concert life.

But that also meant that “LA Variations” would inevitably overshadow an otherwise ambitious program that opened with Debussy’s cantata “La Damoiselle Elue” (The Blessed Damsel) and closed with Stravinsky’s opera-oratorio, “Oedipus Rex.”

Both are Salonen specialties, both works he’s recorded. And the program allowed for the clever splitting of the always reliable Los Angeles Master Chorale--the women for the Debussy, the men for the Stravinsky. The Debussy, a shimmering, gorgeous setting of a kitschy Pre-Raphaelite text by Dante Gabriel Rossetti was beautifully played by the orchestra; mezzo-soprano Monica Groop brought a good sense of mystery as the narrator, although soprano Joan Rodgers came on a bit strong for the distracted damsel and her erotic-religious musings.

There is more theater in Stravinsky’s curious version of Sophicles--with its remote Latin text fashioned by Cocteau and the composer’s wild Verdian musical characterizations--than Salonen seemed to care for. But the musical outlines were set forth with a certain boldness, and the three principal singers--tenor Jorma Silvastri as Oedipus, Groop and bass-baritone Willard White--are magnificent. Actor Maximilian Schell effectively read Cocteau’s narration in English.

* The Los Angeles Philharmonic, with Salonen conducting, repeats “LA Variations” and the rest of this program at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., Sunday at 2:30 p.m. $8-$60. (213) 365-3500.