Top 37 Quotes by Esa-Pekka Salonen

I can't imagine how many first performances I've done, perhaps 500. Some of them have been very good, and some of course very bad.

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

Every day we make more progress toward understanding the concert hall.

I feel very free and very happy to be a composer.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.