Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, is not one to shy away from difficult projects. The Finnish conductor’s 17-year-tenure on the West Coast is rife with examples of his energetic and innovative work. But when Mr. Salonen chose to mount Wagner’s five-hour “Tristan und Isolde,” which arrives at Avery Fisher Hall under the guise of “The Tristan Project,” and is among the most fascinating and profound of artistic explorations of human love, he turned to alternative inspiration.

Mr. Salonen had seen an exhibition of video artist Bill Viola’s work, “The Passions,” at the J. Paul Getty museum in Los Angeles, and the conductor spotted a possible connection between Mr. Viola’s images and Wagner’s work. On display were video portraits, which “looked like conventional portraits,” Mr. Salonen said, “but the people in them went through the whole gamut of human emotion — rage, joy, sorrow — in incredibly slow motion. I thought the timescale was right for Wagner.” Mr. Salonen believed the projections allowed for a literalism impossible in a conventional performance. “Much of it happens only in the minds of people, and 85% of it happens before the opera starts,” Mr. Salonen said of Wagner’s work. “A normal opera staging has to work in metaphor because you can’t have the real thing. But projections permit the image of the real thing. The purely metaphoric becomes something else.”

After discussing the idea with director Peter Sellars, who became the stage director of “The Tristan Project,” Mr. Salonen asked Mr. Viola to participate. “He was flabbergasted because Wagner had never been a central part of his life, but finally said, ‘I guess I’m in.'”But the projections haven’t been entirely well received. Both at the production’s first semi-staged outing in Los Angeles’s Walt Disney Concert Hall in 2004 and in its second incarnation as a full opera production in Paris the following year, some critics complained that the projections distracted from the music.

Mr. Salonen, however, dismissed such concerns. “Anything that happens onstage is a distraction,” he said. “In opera, people divide their attention because different elements come together. If anything, the projections enhance the musical experience because the imagery matches the music, sometimes for the first time.” Mr. Salonen cited as an example Isolde’s closing monologue, known as the “Liebestod” (“Love-death”), although Wagner referred to it as her “transfiguration.” She sings of a vision of Tristan rising up amidst the stars and of a melody that seems to call her to him.

In addition, technical improvements have been made in the quality of the digital projection used in the show. “There have been big leaps in just these few years,” Mr. Salonen said. “The quality and clarity of images will be much stronger than in Paris.” Originally the New York performances of “The Tristan Project” were to have inaugurated the Seventh Regiment Armory on Park Avenue as an arts venue. But, citing the high costs of readying the armory in time for the scheduled performances, Lincoln Center moved the project to Avery Fisher Hall. Mr. Salonen stressed that the New York audience will have essentially the same experience afforded in Los Angeles.

New York will also enjoy a broad view of what Mr. Salonen’s dynamic leadership has meant for the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The orchestra’s residency, which begins this weekend, consists of four concerts, including a chance to sample Mr. Salonen’s work as a composer when his orchestral piece “Helix” is performed on Sunday. Earlier this month Mr. Salonen, 48, announced he will end his tenure as the orchestra’s music director to devote more time to composition following the 2008–09 season.

“I always thought of myself as a composer who started to conduct, first in new music circles,” Mr. Salonen, who trained at the Sibelius Academy in his native Helsinki, Finland, said. His more recent work draws on idioms of the music he has conducted, yet speaks with a distinctive, innovative voice, capable of satisfying both the devotee of new music and the general listener.

But Mr. Salonen is hardly abandoning conducting. In 2008–09, he takes over London’s Philharmonic Orchestra, and in the fall of 2009 makes his Metropolitan Opera debut in Janacek’s “From the House of the Dead.” He doesn’t see a lot of opera in his future but does admit to having a list of them he “wants to get his hands on.” With “The Tristan Project,” however, Mr. Salonen has already crossed one off of his list. “There has never been another piece that has influenced history so much,” he said. “It’s hypnotic. It grabs you and never lets you go.”