There is such a suspicion in today’s world of people who do more than one thing, who aren’t specialized. – Esa-Pekka Salonen
I’m still disturbed if a chord isn’t together, but your priorities change as you get older. – Esa-Pekka Salonen
Once you get over the first hill, there is always a new, higher one lurking, of course. – Esa-Pekka Salonen
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
Anyone who composes and conducts at the same time is immediately suspect, because he must be faking one or the other. – Esa-Pekka Salonen
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
With American orchestras, in particular, because they play in such huge halls, getting a true pianissimo is very hard. – Esa-Pekka Salonen
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
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
This conducting thing happened. In 1983 I was sucked into this international career, which was a very scary experience. – Esa-Pekka Salonen
Stravinsky is masterly: his harmony is conceived so precisely that it can only be the way it is. – Esa-Pekka Salonen
My music wouldn’t sound the way it does if I hadn’t had the experience of conducting. – 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 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
In the range of music that we play – roughly 300 years’ worth-there really are more similarities than differences. – Esa-Pekka Salonen
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
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
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
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
Pulse as an active means of expression, Stravinsky and Beethoven are the two masters of that. – 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
