Esa-Pekka Salonen

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

This country, and the West Coast, especially, is bad at preserving any cultural legacy. ”

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

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 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. ”

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