Esa-Pekka Salonen Quotes

Once you get over the first hill, there is always a new, higher one lurking, of course.

There will have to be times when I'm not conducting because I'm composing. I haven't solved that problem, and perhaps I never will.

As we watch TV or films, there are no organic transitions, only edits. The idea of A becoming B, rather than A jumping to B, has become foreign.

Orchestras have become used to the emphasis on the separation of layers, of the ultimate precision and clarity.

The act of conducting in itself, of waving my arms in the air and being in charge, I didn't miss. I missed the sensual pleasure of being in contact with music.

I discovered that the people of the North are different and there's no way you can make a person from the North similar to a Southerner. They're two different worlds.

This conducting thing happened. In 1983 I was sucked into this international career, which was a very scary experience.

Pulse as an active means of expression, Stravinsky and Beethoven are the two masters of that.

My music wouldn't sound the way it does if I hadn't had the experience of conducting.

I feel very free and very happy to be a composer.

The underlying process in Northern music tends to be slower and continuous, whatever's happening on the surface; in Southern music the underlying process is always faster.

I've learned a lot from the masters of orchestration, like Ravel and Stravinsky.

After 30 years I have realized the greatest pleasure I can get is to have learnt.

I love a visceral sound, the kind that hits you in the belly.

I always had, deep down, a slight aversion toward the purely cerebral in music.

I don't believe in an annual dose of film music for the sake of it being film music. If we program film music, it will be because there is a real artistic reason for doing so.

With American orchestras, in particular, because they play in such huge halls, getting a true pianissimo is very hard.

This country, and the West Coast, especially, is bad at preserving any cultural legacy.

I'm still disturbed if a chord isn't together, but your priorities change as you get older.

In the range of music that we play - roughly 300 years' worth-there really are more similarities than differences.

Every day we make more progress toward understanding the concert hall.

The players never think they project enough. In a hall that seats 3,300 people, it's a very scary thing to play so quietly that you can barely hear yourself.

Orphei Drängar possesses a combination of power, energy, and culture. Joy of discovery combined with professional technical and musical prowess.

Stravinsky is masterly: his harmony is conceived so precisely that it can only be the way it is.

The classical music industry, has been an industry of covers. So we do covers, and if I compare this with the rock and pop side, what is the most exciting event?

The Royal Festival Hall in London is nice; people hang out there. I think this inviting, non-exclusive character is very important.

Los Angeles is just a more open place. The way L.A. functions is that people give you a forum. They say, Show us what you can do.

I think truth as an idea should be left to the philosophers and perhaps religious leaders and politicians, and professional people who deal with that idea.

I actually don't like this term, "classic." It's wrong, but we don't have a better word at the moment.

If I were in a position to announce a public competition to coin a new word, I would do so right now.

I realized that the European dogma is not necessarily the only way to look at things.

Our industry [classic music] has kind of retarded into this kind of endless cover-producing thing, and it's a pity.

I started conducting lessons and I realized that this is actually something I like doing.

There's so much energy exchange [in conduction], so you get back a lot, of course, but you also have to give a lot. It's kind of high-energy thing.

The sort of commercial parameters of classical music changed after the [World War II] , and the whole industry became more backward-looking.

Somehow, conductor as this superhuman conduit between the masters and the masterpieces and the immortals.

I think if you would like to describe composing as an act with one word, "slow" would be the word.

There was this kind of mildly annoying mythology about conductor Like biker should riding a Harley-Davidson on an LP cover, and wearing a sort of a leather suit.

Sometimes you spend nine months, 10 months, a year writing a piece that you will hear two years later or something like that, and you never see anybody. It's a very different sort of metabolic.

When an artist works today or whenever, it's not about creating immortal masterpieces, because that's the one thing we don't decide ourselves.

Our audience, it has been a more difficult process for classical music audiences around the world, and I'm not completely certain why.

The philharmonic became such a journey and adventure in my life, and a deeply satisfying thing.

The music I turn out these days is the kind of music I want to hear myself.

Music has just as much to do with movement and body as it does soul and intellect.

In Europe, there is so much tradition, and everyone has established ideas as to what art should be and what it has always been.

I'm composing more than before. I'm cutting down on conducting.

I can't imagine how many first performances I've done, perhaps 500. Some of them have been very good, and some of course very bad.

The Northern idea of form is more of a process. The various units of the form overlap. You can't tell where some things stop and new things start. This is typical of Sibelius.

I like this idea of identification with the local team. I think it's great. That's what an orchestra should be. It's an orchestra for its hometown, and it serves the people.

There is such a suspicion in today's world of people who do more than one thing, who aren't specialized.