Quote

I think if you would like to describe composing as an act with one word, slow would be the word.

Esa-Pekka Salonen

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Esa-Pekka Salonen
Age: 66
Born: 1958
Born: June 30
Composer
Conductor
Helsingfors
Composing
Describe
Slow
Word
Would
Think
Thinking
Like

More quotes by Esa-Pekka Salonen

Image
My music wouldn't sound the way it does if I hadn't had the experience of conducting.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
Image
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?
Esa-Pekka Salonen
Image
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.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
Image
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
Image
The sort of commercial parameters of classical music changed after the [World War II] , and the whole industry became more backward-looking.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
Image
Anyone who composes and conducts at the same time is immediately suspect, because he must be faking one or the other.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
Image
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
Image
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.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
Image
I'm still disturbed if a chord isn't together, but your priorities change as you get older.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
Image
Stravinsky is masterly: his harmony is conceived so precisely that it can only be the way it is.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
Image
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.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
Image
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.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
Image
Orchestras have become used to the emphasis on the separation of layers, of the ultimate precision and clarity.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
Image
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
Image
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.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
Image
I love a visceral sound, the kind that hits you in the belly.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
Image
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.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
Image
The philharmonic became such a journey and adventure in my life, and a deeply satisfying thing.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
Image
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.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
Image
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