MUSIC REVIEW : Lutoslawski’s Polish Delights : The popular composer leads the Philharmonic New Music Group in a rich program.

Witold Lutoslawski is one of those rare composers both hugely respected and widely popular. At 77, the Polish musician already has a large place in the history books, plus an international following that ecumenically crosses all the boundaries of the factionalized new music scene.

At the core of his popularity lies his concern for the audience. His forms are deliberate stratagems to entice and entrap the listening ear, his scoring colorful and evocative, his pacing sure. For all the complexity of his original sound language, it never seems formulaic or contrived.

All of this was apparent Monday evening at the Japan America Theatre, when the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group presented a Lutoslawski-designed program, part of it under the baton of the composer.

The String Quartet from 1964 represents the composer at his most distilled--its two-movement, back-weighted form severe, its metrically unsynchronized part-writing a remarkable rapprochement between linearity and sound mass, text and texture.

But it is also a work of ravishing sensuousness, whether in the muscularity of the ricochetting octaves used as structural markers or the suave throbbing of the post-climax tristesse. Its prominence in the repertory is no accident of musical politics, and violinists Camille Avellano and Elizabeth Baker, violist Meredith Snow and cellist Daniel Rothmuller gave it a full measure of glowing intensity and sculpted clarity, unruffled even by the extracurricular piccolo counterpoint emanating from a warm-up room backstage.

“Paroles tissees” (Woven Words), from the following year, is a more diffuse fantasy, on a four-part poem by Jean-Francoise Chabrun. It glides easily between cool allusion and overt passion, to stunningly poignant effect.

Tenor Drew Abbott, in his West Coast debut, sang with accuracy and limpid grace. His slender production, however, was overwhelmed at both ends of the dynamic scale by the incisive chamber orchestra forces, unrestrained by Lutoslawski as conductor.

The 1984 Partita is a more prosaic piece, uncomfortable in the mechanical neo-Baroque gestures impelling the vehicle. Violinist Tamara Chernyak unrolled its linear rhapsodies with pointed vigor and lent purposeful urgency to its more characterful moments, ably and pertinently seconded by pianist Gloria Cheng.

The neatly structured program also featured works from Polish composers of the generations before and after Lutoslawski. “Appendix,” a four-movement mini-concerto for piccolo, made a powerful introduction for 36-year-old Pawel Szymanski in its U.S. premiere.

A difficult, kaleidoscopic bit of Euro-minimalism, “Appendix” benefitted from the agility and lyrical focus of soloist Rachel Rudich, who partially atoned for the accidental warm-up graffiti she imposed on the finale of the Lutoslawski Quartet with a blithely risk-taking performance. Steven Stucky guided the 10-piece supporting ensemble.

Opening the concert, Karol Szymanowski’s “Slopiewnie” (Singing Words, roughly, from 1921) proved an apt bookend to Lutoslawski’s “Paroles Tissees.” It is a gorgeous song cycle, on idiosyncratic poems by Julian Tuwim that share much with both Hopkins and Cummings, if Wanda Wilk’s delightful program translations are any indication.

Once warmed-up, soprano Jennifer Trost presented the lush, dreamy music with rapturous spirit and fresh, blooming sound. Stucky led a lithe accompaniment, alert to the evanescent shifts of mood and color.