Salonen's bang-bang Beethoven was least effective in Monday's Eighth Symphony, which has the most accents and fast passages. The result was hardly the "genial farewell" ascribed to the music by Joseph Kerman in Grove's Dictionary, nor even the "wild good humor" of program annotator Michael Steinberg. It was more the frantic fist-pounding of creditors at the door. One can argue that pounding is more appropriate for the famous Fifth Symphony that concluded the Monday concert. Certainly the audience loved it. Its enthusiasm elicited an encore, Sibelius' Valse triste (fortunately bang-less, but with an overly accelerated middle section that turned the "sad waltz" into a hallucination). But for anyone who remembered Herbert Blomstedt's profound treatment of the Fifth here last October, Salonen's Fifth had little to offer — most significantly the terrific playing of the double bass section in the Scherzo.

The Tuesday Beethoven improved somewhat. Salonen's take on the Leonore Overture No. 2 generated some mystery and drama, and Salonen took care in the last movement of the Seventh Symphony to turn his formula off temporarily during contrasting sections. But the famous second movement of the Seventh, "the apotheosis of the Dance," according to Wagner, was more the insistence of a drippy faucet than something of any great depth.

Contrasting the Beethoven interpretations in every respect were the two works commissioned by the Philharmonic and thoroughly studied, apparently, by its music director. The 1992 Fourth Symphony by Lutoslawski was most like the Beethoven in style, presenting extroverted, well-organized, dramatic rhetoric, the multifaceted nature of which was ably presented by Salonen. Especially memorable were the bass throbs in the first movement that returned at the end of the concluding second, but there were fine moments too numerous to detail in between. No formula other than fine music-making seemed to apply here, as the now flexible Salonen allowed the music to speak for itself.

Similar was Salonen's highly fluid take on a phenomenal exercise in tone color, Hillborg's Eleven Gates, premiered only 11 days earlier in L.A. After decades of close listening to contemporary music, I consider myself lucky if, when listening to a new piece, I can experience two or three new sounds that have never before graced my ears. Eleven Gates had dozens. The title refers to the often drastic transitions between its 11 movements. Certain recurring references provide cohesion among thoroughly disparate elements, but structure is not the raison d''tre for this truly visionary composition, which should be listened to in a neoimpressionist go-with-the-flow manner, with one's own thoughts springing forth from the imaginative movement titles (e.g., "Suddenly in the Room With Floating Mirrors," or "String Quartet Spiraling to the Sea Floor").

Hillborg is not a stranger here; his Exquisite Corpse received complimentary notices when the S.F. Symphony performed it in 2003. Like his magnificent clarinet concerto, Eleven Gates capitalizes on a postmodern approach to triadic tonality. In the concerto, amid a cacophony of dissonance, a blink of a pause ushers in a glorious G-major chord out of nowhere. In Eleven Gates, over a more graduated interval, a dozen or more separate lines in the string section convolve through a blur into a sublime D-major chord. Other composers should take note: Judicious use of triads outside the context of tonal centers may result in a liberating compromise between the increasingly played-out modernist and minimalist schools of composition.

Like the Beethoven, both the Lutoslawski and the Hillborg were hits with the audience. Hillborg himself, sporting a bright green tie, was present to receive accolades. Outgoing S.F Opera Director Pamela Rosenberg, in her easily spotted red jacket, had two words to say about the Gates: "Loved it!" A member of the general public likened the Lutoslawski positively to a summer night with bugs and frogs.

Whether through formula or flexibility, Salonen and his orchestra delivered the goods to the audience — and I don't care what formulas he brings along next time, as long as there's another Hillborg along with it.