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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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Esa-Pekka Salonen
Age: 66
Born: 1958
Born: June 30
Composer
Conductor
Helsingfors
Would
Sense
Institutions
Wing
Think
Stills
Cutting
Museums
Thinking
Young
Dead
Edge
People
Problem
Sort
Contemporary
Still
Quite
Edges
Persons
Almost
Clearly
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Person
Often
Wings
Portray
Without
Business
Towards
Museum

More quotes by 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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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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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.
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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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In Europe, there is so much tradition, and everyone has established ideas as to what art should be and what it has always been.
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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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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.
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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 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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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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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 love a visceral sound, the kind that hits you in the belly.
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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The philharmonic became such a journey and adventure in my life, and a deeply satisfying thing.
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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Anyone who composes and conducts at the same time is immediately suspect, because he must be faking one or the other.
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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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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I think if you would like to describe composing as an act with one word, slow would be the word.
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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