The 75+ Esa-Pekka Salonen Quotes

If I Were In A Position To Announce A Public Competition To Coin A New Word, I Would Do So Right Now.

Our Industry [classic Music] Has Kind Of Retarded Into This Kind Of Endless Cover-producing Thing, And It's A Pity.

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.

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?

I Think We Are In The Process Of Getting The Word Out, And We Haven't Done Very Well Yet. But We Are Trying.

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.

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.

I'm Composing More Than Before. I'm Cutting Down On Conducting.

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.

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.

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.

Our Audience, It Has Been A More Difficult Process For Classical Music Audiences Around The World, And I'm Not Completely Certain Why.