Quotes from Esa-Pekka Salonen

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

I always had, deep down, a slight aversion toward the purely cerebral in music.

I love a visceral sound, the kind that hits you in the belly.

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

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.

I think truth as an idea should be left to the philosophers and perhaps religious leaders and politicians, and professional people who deal with that idea.

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

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.

Orchestras have become used to the emphasis on the separation of layers, of the ultimate precision and clarity.

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

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

There is more openness in LA to possibilities than on the East Coast of America. There is a pioneering spirit there that stems from the reason people went out there in the first place-to find something new.

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

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

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.