My music wouldn't sound the way it does if I hadn't had the experience of conducting. Esa-Pekka Salonen More Quotes by Esa-Pekka Salonen More Quotes From Esa-Pekka Salonen 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. Esa-Pekka Salonen focus giving people I went to work one morning, and outside my door was Cindy Crawford in a black bra, and I thought that very clearly the building is making progress in integrating itself into various layers of our culture. Esa-Pekka Salonen black doors morning The act of conducting in itself, of waving my arms in the air and being in charge, I didn't miss. I missed the sensual pleasure of being in contact with music. Esa-Pekka Salonen sensual missing air If you think of the history, in the days of Brahms and Beethoven and all these guys, almost every concert was a new music concert. To play something old was really an exception. Esa-Pekka Salonen guy play thinking 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? Esa-Pekka Salonen rocks events sides You know, in some ways conducting is counter-intuitive. It's like winter driving in Finland - if you skid, the natural reaction is to fight with the wheel and jam on the brakes, which is the quickest way to get killed. What you have to do is let go, and the car will right itself. It's the same when an orchestra loses its ensemble. You have to resist the temptation to semaphore, and let the orchestra find its own way back to the pulse. Esa-Pekka Salonen fighting letting-go winter Orphei Drängar possesses a combination of power, energy, and culture. Joy of discovery combined with professional technical and musical prowess. Esa-Pekka Salonen musical joy discovery We need new art. Old art cannot do that. It can do lots of other things, and of course humanity hasn't changed that much in the last thousand or two thousand years.So that the old Greek dramas are still at the very heart, core, of human experience, but still we need new stuff. Esa-Pekka Salonen drama years art Every orchestra I know, every opera house I know, is desperately looking around trying to find new talent, new composing talent, supporting young composers, supporting new ideas, supporting new ways of getting the message across. Esa-Pekka Salonen house trying ideas 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 nice character thinking After 30 years I have realized the greatest pleasure I can get is to have learnt. Esa-Pekka Salonen greatest-pleasures pleasure years I started conducting lessons and I realized that this is actually something I like doing. Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting i-realized lessons Every day we make more progress toward understanding the concert hall. Esa-Pekka Salonen live-concerts progress understanding 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. Esa-Pekka Salonen player people thinking Orchestras have become used to the emphasis on the separation of layers, of the ultimate precision and clarity. Esa-Pekka Salonen clarity layers orchestra 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." Esa-Pekka Salonen journey order years In the range of music that we play - roughly 300 years' worth-there really are more similarities than differences. Esa-Pekka Salonen differences play years 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 surface southern process The music I turn out these days is the kind of music I want to hear myself. Esa-Pekka Salonen these-days kind want We're dealing with music that is being played by traditional instruments in a specifically built building called a concert hall. Esa-Pekka Salonen class hands ideas
