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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.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
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Esa-Pekka Salonen
Age: 66
Born: 1958
Born: June 30
Composer
Conductor
Helsingfors
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Artist
Today
Masterpieces
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Immortal
Decide
Whenever
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More quotes by Esa-Pekka Salonen
Stravinsky is masterly: his harmony is conceived so precisely that it can only be the way it is.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
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.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
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
In the range of music that we play - roughly 300 years' worth-there really are more similarities than differences.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
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
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
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?
Esa-Pekka Salonen
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
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
Anyone who composes and conducts at the same time is immediately suspect, because he must be faking one or the other.
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.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
After 30 years I have realized the greatest pleasure I can get is to have learnt.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
Conducting was just something that happened by fluke.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
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
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
I'm still disturbed if a chord isn't together, but your priorities change as you get older.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
Orchestras have become used to the emphasis on the separation of layers, of the ultimate precision and clarity.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
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
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
I think if you would like to describe composing as an act with one word, slow would be the word.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
