Esa-Pekka Salonen Quotes
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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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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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I love a visceral sound, the kind that hits you in the belly.
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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 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.
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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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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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Stravinsky is masterly: his harmony is conceived so precisely that it can only be the way it is.
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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.
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I'm composing more than before. I'm cutting down on conducting.
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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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Once you get over the first hill, there is always a new, higher one lurking, of course.
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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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Every day we make more progress toward understanding the concert hall.
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Of course performing talent, that's clear. Maybe this is not so well-known among young people who are interested in music, who are talented in music, but they're trying to figure out how to go about it.
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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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In the range of music that we play - roughly 300 years' worth-there really are more similarities than differences.
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I went to work one morning, and outside my door was Cindy Crawford in a black bra, and I thought that very clearly the building is making progress in integrating itself into various layers of our culture.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I always had, deep down, a slight aversion toward the purely cerebral in music.
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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.