Esa Pekka Salonen Quotes

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Los Angeles, Function

• If the seams are showing, there is something wrong with the performance or the construction of the piece. This idea is completely at odds with our modern visual experience, because everything today is based on montage.

  Esa Pekka Salonen

  Topics in Experience

  Tags in Performance

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

  Esa Pekka Salonen

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Priorities

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

  Esa Pekka Salonen

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Orchestras, Precision, Clarity

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

  Esa Pekka Salonen

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Yourself

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Music, Process

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Idea, Form

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Players, Think, Yourself

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

  Esa Pekka Salonen

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Myself, Music

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Problem, Times

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

  Esa Pekka Salonen

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Suspicion, Today, People

• This continuity of sound and form was something that I became really interested in from working with Ligeti. He was always going on about how form has to be continuous.

  Esa Pekka Salonen

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Interested, Working

• When we’re at the end of The Rite of Spring or of a Bruckner symphony, I want people to feel the music physically.

  Esa Pekka Salonen

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Music, Feeling

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

  Esa Pekka Salonen

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Hard, Play

• 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.

  Ethel Waters

  Topics in America

  Tags in Spirit, People

•  

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

   

  Esa Pekka Salonen

Esa Pekka Salonen (36)

Birth:	30th June, 1958
Nationality:	Finnish
Profession:	Composer, Music Conductor

About

Esa Pekka Salonen was born in Helsinki, Finland. He is a Finnish music conductor and composer. He is currently Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor of the Philharmonia Orchestra in London, Conductor Laureate of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Composer-In-Residence at the New York Philharmonic.

Related Authors

• Nadia Boulanger
• Paul Whiteman
• Mike Patton
• Alan Hovhaness
• Mark Knopfler
• Abbey Lincoln
• Bennie Wallace
• David Tudor
• Jay McShann
• Peter Abelard

Advertisement

Today's Anniversary - 21st November

Births

• 1989 - Rene Francois Ghislain Magritte
• 1912 - Eleanor Powell
• 1870 - Mary Johnston
• 1943 - Philip Norman Bredesen Jr.
• 1937 - Marlo Thomas

Deaths

• 1996 - Mohammad Abdus Salam
• 1926 - Joseph McKenna
• 1959 - Max Baer
• 1945 - Robert Benchley
• 1969 - Norman Lindsay