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.

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• Esa-Pekka Salonen:

  The underlying process in Northern music tends to be slower and continuous, whatever's happening on

• Esa-Pekka Salonen:

  The Northern idea of form is more of a process. The various units of the form overlap. You can't te

• Esa-Pekka Salonen:

  This conducting thing happened. In 1983 I was sucked into this international career, which was a ve

• Esa-Pekka Salonen:

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

• Esa-Pekka Salonen:

  I can't imagine how many first performances I've done, perhaps 500. Some of them have been very goo

• Esa-Pekka Salonen:

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

• Esa-Pekka Salonen:

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

• Esa-Pekka Salonen:

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

• Esa-Pekka Salonen:

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

• Esa-Pekka Salonen:

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