Esa-Pekka Salonen

“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.”

“In the range of music that we play - roughly 300 years' worth-there really are more similarities than differences.”

“Stravinsky is masterly: his harmony is conceived so precisely that it can only be the way it is.”

“Pulse as an active means of expression, Stravinsky and Beethoven are the two masters of that.”

“Music has just as much to do with movement and body as it does soul and intellect.”

“The music I turn out these days is the kind of music I want to hear myself.”

“The Northern idea of form is more of a process. The various units of the form overlap. You can't tell where some things stop and new things start. This is typical of Sibelius.”

“The Royal Festival Hall in London is nice; people hang out there. I think this inviting, non-exclusive character is very important.”

“In Europe, there is so much tradition, and everyone has established ideas as to what art should be and what it has always been.”

“This conducting thing happened. In 1983 I was sucked into this international career, which was a very scary experience.”

“After working with Ligeti I began to hear Brahms and Beethoven differently.”

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

“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.”

“Once you get over the first hill, there is always a new, higher one lurking, of course.”

“Los Angeles is just a more open place. The way L.A. functions is that people give you a forum. They say, Show us what you can do.”

“I discovered that the people of the North are different and there's no way you can make a person from the North similar to a Southerner. They're two different worlds.”

“I've learned a lot from the masters of orchestration, like Ravel and Stravinsky.”

“With American orchestras, in particular, because they play in such huge halls, getting a true pianissimo is very hard.”

“Anyone who composes and conducts at the same time is immediately suspect, because he must be faking one or the other.”

“The sound was my greatest concern. There were certain difficulties getting used to the way every musician can hear his or herself, the way each of them relates to the musician in the next seat.”