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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
Actually
Moment
Moments
Better
Like
Classic
Term
Word
Wrong

More quotes by Esa-Pekka Salonen

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Stravinsky is masterly: his harmony is conceived so precisely that it can only be the way it is.
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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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I think if you would like to describe composing as an act with one word, slow would be the word.
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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.
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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.
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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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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.
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Anyone who composes and conducts at the same time is immediately suspect, because he must be faking one or the other.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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My music wouldn't sound the way it does if I hadn't had the experience of conducting.
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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 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.
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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.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
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Orchestras have become used to the emphasis on the separation of layers, of the ultimate precision and clarity.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
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Music has just as much to do with movement and body as it does soul and intellect.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
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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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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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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