Esa-Pekka Salonen
I always felt that one day I would have to make the change in my own life, bite the bullet and see what it is to be a composer who conducts rather than the other way around.Collection: One Day
I realized that the European dogma is not necessarily the only way to look at things.Collection: Looks
Our industry [classic music] has kind of retarded into this kind of endless cover-producing thing, and it's a pity.Collection: Classic
If I were in a position to announce a public competition to coin a new word, I would do so right now.Collection: Competition
I'm trying to conduct only five months a year, and the rest will be composing time. I'm trying to spend as much as I can out of those months here in L.A., because for creative work, this is a fantastic place.Collection: Years
Somehow, conductor as this superhuman conduit between the masters and the masterpieces and the immortals.Collection: Masters
There was this kind of mildly annoying mythology about conductor Like biker should riding a Harley-Davidson on an LP cover, and wearing a sort of a leather suit.Collection: Suits
I started conducting lessons and I realized that this is actually something I like doing.Collection: Lessons
There's so much energy exchange [in conduction], so you get back a lot, of course, but you also have to give a lot. It's kind of high-energy thing.Collection: Giving
I think if you would like to describe composing as an act with one word, "slow" would be the word.Collection: Thinking
Sometimes you spend nine months, 10 months, a year writing a piece that you will hear two years later or something like that, and you never see anybody. It's a very different sort of metabolic.Collection: Writing
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.Collection: Thinking
It would be very tempting to say that why paint because we have Michelangelo, we have Leonardo [Da Vinci], we have all these guys. Why waste your time, because most likely you're not going to be on that level anyway.Collection: Guy
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.Collection: Artist
I actually don't like this term, "classic." It's wrong, but we don't have a better word at the moment.Collection: Classic
Our audience, it has been a more difficult process for classical music audiences around the world, and I'm not completely certain why.Collection: World
Classic music somehow changed, and it changed between the first and the second world wars, and somehow what happened was that the hero that had been the composer, the hero now was the performer, and especially the conductor.Collection: War
The philharmonic became such a journey and adventure in my life, and a deeply satisfying thing.Collection: Adventure
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.Collection: Art
I was starting a group of musicians and we had a group of young composers in Finland back in the '70s, and the real conductors, the professional conductors at the time were not interested in our stuff.Collection: Real
There is something very special about this part of the world [U.S], which is the openness and the curiosity and the lack of prejudice and the lack of generally accepted norms as to what art should be and how an artist's career should go and all that.Collection: Art
I like this idea of identification with the local team. I think it's great. That's what an orchestra should be. It's an orchestra for its hometown, and it serves the people.Collection: Team
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.Collection: Differences
I think we are in the process of getting the word out, and we haven't done very well yet. But we are trying.Collection: Thinking
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?Collection: Cutting
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.Collection: People
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.Collection: Religious
Coming from a sort of very rigid European type of training to this culture which is just a little more open - a lot more open, and kind of curious, and asking different sorts of questions.Because the problem for me was that the European modernist movement in the '70s was all about right or wrong. Some things were right and you were dealing with the truth, as it were, and then some things were wrong and therefore not allowed.Collection: Training
If somebody had told me when I was starting composition in Helsinki in the '70s that I would end up in L.A. and to describe that journey, those 17 years with the philharmonic and building the hall and this and that, I would have said, "This is a fairy tale of the first order."Collection: Journey
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.Collection: Couple
I'm composing more than before. I'm cutting down on conducting.Collection: Cutting