ESA-PEKKA SALONEN

There is such a suspicion in today's world of people who do more than one thing, who aren't specialized.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

This continuity of sound and form was something that I became really interested in from working with Ligeti. He was always going on about how form has to be continuous.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

When we're at the end of The Rite of Spring or of a Bruckner symphony, I want people to feel the music physically.

If the seams are showing, there is something wrong with the performance or the construction of the piece. This idea is completely at odds with our modern visual experience, because everything today is based on montage.

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

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.

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