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

Esa-Pekka Salonen

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Esa-Pekka Salonen
Age: 66
Born: 1958
Born: June 30
Composer
Conductor
Helsingfors
Way
Conducting
Hadn
Wouldn
Sound
Experience
Doe
Music

More quotes by Esa-Pekka Salonen

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After 30 years I have realized the greatest pleasure I can get is to have learnt.
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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.
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I think if you would like to describe composing as an act with one word, slow would be the word.
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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.
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The sort of commercial parameters of classical music changed after the [World War II] , and the whole industry became more backward-looking.
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There is more openness in LA to possibilities than on the East Coast of America. There is a pioneering spirit there that stems from the reason people went out there in the first place-to find something new.
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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.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
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I went to work one morning, and outside my door was Cindy Crawford in a black bra, and I thought that very clearly the building is making progress in integrating itself into various layers of our culture.
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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?
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The classical music industry, has been an industry of covers. So we do covers, and if I compare this with the rock and pop side, what is the most exciting event?
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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.
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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
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I'm still disturbed if a chord isn't together, but your priorities change as you get older.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
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In the range of music that we play - roughly 300 years' worth-there really are more similarities than differences.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
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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
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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
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I feel that this is my artistic home, and I'm very happy to be a California artist together with many others who are not from here originally but who decided to make this the center of their activities. There's something about that that I find very inspiring and satisfying.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
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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.
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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
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The philharmonic became such a journey and adventure in my life, and a deeply satisfying thing.
Esa-Pekka Salonen