July 29 (Bloomberg) -- For Louis Langree, music director of Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart festival, the challenge each summer is this: How do you stay cool with a composer who's been dead 200 years?

``It's important to play other music that's linked to Mozart to enrich your palate of expression,'' he said. ``I think it would be a mistake to play for years and years and years always the same beautiful symphonies.''

Take this year's tradition-buster: the much anticipated U.S. premiere of Samoan choreographer Lemi Ponifasio's Mozart-inspired dance and theater work ``Requiem'' on Aug. 8 and 9. The piece blends South Pacific music with movement, chant and spoken word.

``Requiem'' features 24 dancers from various backgrounds -- fishermen, weavers, farmers, lawyers and architects. It mourns the vanishing of the Kiribati Islands, where rising sea levels are devouring the land.

Tonight, the French-born Langree, 47, will kick off the four-week festival at Avery Fisher Hall in Manhattan with more traditional fare, Mozart's Symphony No. 40 in G minor. He'll finish the concert with Gustav Mahler's ``Das Lied von der Erde'' (Song of the Earth), a one-hour piece divided into six parts, with Anna Larsson, the Swedish operatic vocalist, singing alto and Paul Groves, tenor.

`Demanding'

``This Mahler composition is such a demanding piece,'' Langree said in an interview last Friday after a rehearsal at Avery Fisher. ``Normally it's written for a huge orchestra, but it will be performed by 13 musicians.''

Langree will stick to the 42-year-old festival's roots with an all-Mozart program performed by the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra on July 31 at the Rose Theater. On Aug. 13, Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho will present ``La Passion de Simone,'' featuring soprano Dawn Upshaw in a musical and theatrical piece about the life of French philosopher and mystic Simone Weil.

On closing night, Aug. 23, Langree and the Mostly Mozart Orchestra will conclude the festival with Mozart's Mass in C minor and Richard Strauss's master work, ``Metamorphosen,'' a complex piece written for 23 string instruments.

Langree, who became Mostly Mozart's music director in 2002, grew up listening to the great composers as a child in Mulhouse, France, near the German and Swiss border. As a teenager, he studied music at a conservatory in Strasbourg. He began his career as a choir master at the Opera National de Lyon.

Rolling Stones, `Ahh!'

Langree, a specialist in the works of Mozart and Beethoven, got his big break when he was named music director of the Orchestre de Picardie (France) in 1993. Later he became the conductor of the Opera National de Lyon and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Liege in Belgium.

Langree, a resident of Paris who rents an apartment near Lincoln Center during the Mozart festival, said he prefers listening to live music when he's not conducting. His tastes run from classical to rock. About two years ago, he put down his baton to check out a Rolling Stones concert.

``It was such an -- ahhh! -- a shocking experience about the vitality of live music,'' Langree said, his eyes widening. ``It was that collective energy in the audience that was amazing. It's like the difference between eating fresh food and eating food out of a can.''

Langree and the Mostly Mozart Orchestra open the festival tonight and July 30 at Avery Fisher Hall, 1941 Broadway at 65th Street in Manhattan. Information and tickets: +1-212-875-5030.

To contact the reporter on this story: Patrick Cole in New York at pcole3@Bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: July 29, 2008 00:01 EDT