Esa-Pekka Salonen Quotes
I'm trying to conduct only five months a year, and the rest will be composing time. I'm trying to spend as much as I can out of those months here in L.A., because for creative work, this is a fantastic place.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
Quotes to Explore
I've learned a lot from the masters of orchestration, like Ravel and Stravinsky.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
With American orchestras, in particular, because they play in such huge halls, getting a true pianissimo is very hard.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
I think if you would like to describe composing as an act with one word, "slow" would be the word.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
We need new art. Old art cannot do that. It can do lots of other things, and of course humanity hasn't changed that much in the last thousand or two thousand years.So that the old Greek dramas are still at the very heart, core, of human experience, but still we need new stuff.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
There is such a suspicion in today's world of people who do more than one thing, who aren't specialized.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
Orchestras have become used to the emphasis on the separation of layers, of the ultimate precision and clarity.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
The Royal Festival Hall in London is nice; people hang out there. I think this inviting, non-exclusive character is very important.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
The music I turn out these days is the kind of music I want to hear myself.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
Every orchestra I know, every opera house I know, is desperately looking around trying to find new talent, new composing talent, supporting young composers, supporting new ideas, supporting new ways of getting the message across.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
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
I'm still disturbed if a chord isn't together, but your priorities change as you get older.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
Somehow, conductor as this superhuman conduit between the masters and the masterpieces and the immortals.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
Pulse as an active means of expression, Stravinsky and Beethoven are the two masters of that.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
It would be very tempting to say that why paint because we have Michelangelo, we have Leonardo [Da Vinci], we have all these guys. Why waste your time, because most likely you're not going to be on that level anyway.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
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.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
Anyone who composes and conducts at the same time is immediately suspect, because he must be faking one or the other.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
I was starting a group of musicians and we had a group of young composers in Finland back in the '70s, and the real conductors, the professional conductors at the time were not interested in our stuff.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
I'm trying to conduct only five months a year, and the rest will be composing time. I'm trying to spend as much as I can out of those months here in L.A., because for creative work, this is a fantastic place.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
