Esa Pekka Salonen Quotes

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

  Esa Pekka Salonen

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  Tags in Happy, Feeling

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Music, Believe

• 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

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  Tags in Person, Different

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Self, Performances

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Idea, Tv

• I always had, deep down, a slight aversion toward the purely cerebral in music.

  Esa Pekka Salonen

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Music

• After working with Ligeti I began to hear Brahms and Beethoven differently.

  Esa Pekka Salonen

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in After, Working

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

  Esa Pekka Salonen

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Self -Love, Sound

• Every day we make more progress toward understanding the concert hall.

  Esa Pekka Salonen

  Topics in Progress

  Tags in Every Day

• In the range of music that we play – roughly 300 years’ worth-there really are more similarities than differences.

  Esa Pekka Salonen

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Music, Play, Roughly

• I’ve learned a lot from the masters of orchestration, like Ravel and Stravinsky.

  Esa Pekka Salonen

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Learned, Orchestration, Masters

• In Europe, there is so much tradition, and everyone has established ideas as to what art should be and what it has always been.

  Esa Pekka Salonen

  Topics in Art

  Tags in Everyone, Ideas

• Music has just as much to do with movement and body as it does soul and intellect.

  Esa Pekka Salonen

  Topics in Soul

  Tags in Music, Effect

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Music, Act

• My music wouldn’t sound the way it does if I hadn’t had the experience of conducting.

  Esa Pekka Salonen

  Topics in Experience

  Tags in Music

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

  Esa Pekka Salonen

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Expression

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

  Esa Pekka Salonen

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Harmony, Precisely

• This conducting thing happened. In 1983 I was sucked into this international career, which was a very scary experience.

  Esa Pekka Salonen

  Topics in Experience

  Tags in Career

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in London, Hall, Nice

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

  Esa Pekka Salonen

  Topics in Country

  Tags in Cultural, Legacy

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.

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