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I actually don't like this term, classic. It's wrong, but we don't have a better word at the moment.

Esa-Pekka Salonen

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Esa-Pekka Salonen
Age: 66
Born: 1958
Born: June 30
Composer
Conductor
Helsingfors
Word
Wrong
Actually
Moment
Moments
Better
Like
Classic
Term

More quotes by Esa-Pekka Salonen

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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
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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.
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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.
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In the range of music that we play - roughly 300 years' worth-there really are more similarities than differences.
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Stravinsky is masterly: his harmony is conceived so precisely that it can only be the way it is.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
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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.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
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After 30 years I have realized the greatest pleasure I can get is to have learnt.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
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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?
Esa-Pekka Salonen
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Of course, if you think of a European or American household in the '50s, so what were the things that when people started climbing up the ladder, what did they buy? A fridge, a TV, I think piano was the number three item in say '53 or '54.
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
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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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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 think if you would like to describe composing as an act with one word, slow would be the word.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
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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.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
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I think we are in the process of getting the word out, and we haven't done very well yet. But we are trying.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
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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
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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
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In Europe, there is so much tradition, and everyone has established ideas as to what art should be and what it has always been.
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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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.
Esa-Pekka Salonen