Esa-Pekka Salonen famous quotes

There is more openness in LA to possibilities than on the East Coast of America. There is a pioneering spirit there that stems from the reason people went out there in the first place-to find something new.
-- Esa-Pekka Salonen

#America #People #Firsts

I feel very free and very happy to be a composer.
-- Esa-Pekka Salonen

#Composer #Very Happy #Feels

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.
-- Esa-Pekka Salonen

#Two #People #Different

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.
-- Esa-Pekka Salonen

#Done #Firsts #Imagine

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

#Aversion

Anyone who composes and conducts at the same time is immediately suspect, because he must be faking one or the other.
-- Esa-Pekka Salonen

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.
-- Esa-Pekka Salonen

#Jumping #Ideas #Transition

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

#Art #Europe #Ideas

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

#Orchestra #Layers #Clarity

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.
-- Esa-Pekka Salonen

#Player #Thinking #People

Every day we make more progress toward understanding the concert hall.
-- Esa-Pekka Salonen

#Understanding #Progress #Concerts

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

#People #World #Today

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

#Way #Harmony #Stravinsky

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

#Mean #Expression #Two

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

#Want #Kind #These Days

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.
-- Esa-Pekka Salonen

#Southern #Process #Surface

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

#Soul #Doe #Movement

After 30 years I have realized the greatest pleasure I can get is to have learnt.
-- Esa-Pekka Salonen

#Years #Pleasure

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.
-- Esa-Pekka Salonen

#People #Giving #Way

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

#Firsts #Hills #Higher

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

#Sound #Doe #Way

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.
-- Esa-Pekka Salonen

#Problem #Conducting #Composing

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

#Careers #Scary #Conducting

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

#Country #West #Legacy

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

#Play #Orchestra #Halls

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.
-- Esa-Pekka Salonen

#Ideas #Typical #Form

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.
-- Esa-Pekka Salonen

#Real #Believe #Film Music

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.
-- Esa-Pekka Salonen

#Air #Missing #Sensual

I love a visceral sound, the kind that hits you in the belly.
-- Esa-Pekka Salonen

#Sound #Kind #Visceral

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

#Ravel #Masters

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

#Priorities #Together #Chords

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

#Play #Differences #Years