Esa-Pekka Salonen Quotes
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Anyone who composes and conducts at the same time is immediately suspect, because he must be faking one or the other.
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I'm composing more than before. I'm cutting down on conducting.
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Orchestras have become used to the emphasis on the separation of layers, of the ultimate precision and clarity.
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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.
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If we always thought like that, why would we study physics, why would we think of cosmology, why would we do any kind of research? Because we know already so much that there is no one person who can contain all that information.
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If I were in a position to announce a public competition to coin a new word, I would do so right now.
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I always felt that one day I would have to make the change in my own life, bite the bullet and see what it is to be a composer who conducts rather than the other way around.
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The biggest difference between U.S and most European big cities is that in a place like London, for instance, there are five orchestras, and there's a bloody competition between these five orchestras.
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Stravinsky is masterly: his harmony is conceived so precisely that it can only be the way it is.
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My music wouldn't sound the way it does if I hadn't had the experience of conducting.
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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.
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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.
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Lots of really interesting people move to U.S and decide to work here, because of this whole attitude and openness. I'm absolutely convinced that this is just the beginning. In a couple decades we will see an even more dramatic change.
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I think we are in the process of getting the word out, and we haven't done very well yet. But we are trying.
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Once you get over the first hill, there is always a new, higher one lurking, of course.
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In Europe, there is so much tradition, and everyone has established ideas as to what art should be and what it has always been.
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This conducting thing happened. In 1983 I was sucked into this international career, which was a very scary experience.
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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?
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Every day we make more progress toward understanding the concert hall.
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In the range of music that we play - roughly 300 years' worth-there really are more similarities than differences.
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I realized that the European dogma is not necessarily the only way to look at things.
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We're not talking about an elite art form from the price point of view. We have a building in L.A. that is incredibly open, exciting, inviting, and all that, and there's no reason for this music not to be part of everybody's everyday life.
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I think we still do have a PR problem in the sense that these institutions portray themselves quite often as a museum without the contemporary wing. For a young cutting-edge person, why would you get into that sort of business, which is very clearly geared towards dead or almost dead people?
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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.