106 Quotes by Esa-Pekka Salonen

If the seams are showing, there is something wrong with the performance or the construction of the piece. This idea is completely at odds with our modern visual experience, because everything today is based on montage.

The players never think they project enough. In a hall that seats 3,300 people, it's a very scary thing to play so quietly that you can barely hear yourself.

This continuity of sound and form was something that I became really interested in from working with Ligeti. He was always going on about how form has to be continuous.

If I were in a position to announce a public competition to coin a new word, I would do so right now.

Our industry [classic music] has kind of retarded into this kind of endless cover-producing thing, and it's a pity.

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.

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.

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.

Conducting was just something that happened by fluke.