106 Quotes by 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.

There will have to be times when I’m not conducting because I’m composing. I haven’t solved that problem, and perhaps I never will.

Conducting is intensely social. You work with a hundred people every day. You collaborate, you try to focus their thoughts, you try to give them a concept, you try to inspire them, and it’s actually exhausting.

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

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.

I’m still disturbed if a chord isn’t together, but your priorities change as you get older.

My music wouldn’t sound the way it does if I hadn’t had the experience of conducting.

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

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.