Esa-Pekka Salonen

There is something very special about this part of the world [U.S], which is the openness and the curiosity and the lack…

— 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…

— Esa-Pekka Salonen

After 30 years I have realized the greatest pleasure I can get is to have learnt.

— 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 started conducting lessons and I realized that this is actually something I like doing.

— Esa-Pekka Salonen

I feel very free and very happy to be a composer.

— Esa-Pekka Salonen

I love a visceral sound, the kind that hits you in the belly.

— 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…

— Esa-Pekka Salonen

Pulse as an active means of expression, Stravinsky and Beethoven are the two masters of that.

— 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…

— 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

As we watch TV or films, there are no organic transitions, only edits. The idea of A becoming B, rather than A…

— Esa-Pekka Salonen

I think we are in the process of getting the word out, and we haven't done very well yet. But we are…

— 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

Sometimes you spend nine months, 10 months, a year writing a piece that you will hear two years later or something like…

— Esa-Pekka Salonen

If I were in a position to announce a public competition to coin a new word, I would do so right now.

— Esa-Pekka Salonen

There is more openness in LA to possibilities than on the East Coast of America. There is a pioneering spirit there that…

— 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…

— Esa-Pekka Salonen

Our audience, it has been a more difficult process for classical music audiences around the world, and I'm not completely certain why.

— Esa-Pekka Salonen

This country, and the West Coast, especially, is bad at preserving any cultural legacy.

— Esa-Pekka Salonen

Classic music somehow changed, and it changed between the first and the second world wars, and somehow what happened was that the…

— Esa-Pekka Salonen

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

— 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…

— Esa-Pekka Salonen

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

— Esa-Pekka Salonen

Stravinsky is masterly: his harmony is conceived so precisely that it can only be the way it is.

— Esa-Pekka Salonen