Room 71--A marvelous contemporary conductor speaks!

Esa-Pekka Salonen (EH-sah PEH-ka SAL-oh-nen "SAL" pronounced as in "salad") has been one of the world’s finest musicians for quite a number of years. Born in Helsinki, Finland, at first he turned his back on music, but eventually came around and turned into a superb and insightful conductor. He is also an active composer. He made his American conducting debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1984, and became the principal conductor there in 2002. At the end of this season, his reign in L.A. will come to an end, and he will take over the conductorship of the Philharmonia Orchestra in England.

Salonen is renowned for his dedication to performing and recording contemporary music. His 1985 recording of Witold Lutoslawski's Symphony No. 3 won the 1985 Gramophone Award for Best Contemporary Recording. Salonen later recorded Lutoslawski's Symphony No. 4 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, once for Sony Classical, and later in a live recording at Walt Disney Concert Hall for Deutsche Grammophon.

Among Salonen's compositions are "...auf den ersten blick und ohne zu wissen..." (1980, a saxophone concerto with a title taken from Franz Kafka's The Trial), Floof for soprano and ensemble (1982, on texts by Stanislaw Lem) and the orchestral L.A. Variations (1996). In order to devote more time to composition, Salonen took a year's sabbatical from conducting in 2000, during which time he wrote a work for solo horn (Concert Étude, the competition piece for Lieksa Brass Week), Dichotomie for piano, Mania for the cellist Anssi Karttunen and sinfonietta, and Gambit, an orchestral piece that was a birthday present for fellow composer and friend Magnus Lindberg.

In 2001, Salonen composed Foreign Bodies, his largest work in terms of orchestration, which incorporated music from the opening movement of Dichotomie. Another orchestral piece, Insomnia, followed in 2002, and another, Wing On Wing, in 2004. Wing On Wing includes parts for two sopranos and distorted samples of architect Frank O. Gehry's voice as well as a fish. As is apparent with his interpretations of such avant-garde works as Jan Sandström's Motorbike Concerto, Esa-Pekka Salonen voices a distaste for ideological and dogmatic approaches to composition and sees music creation as deeply physical. In the liner notes for Deutsche Grammophon's release of Wing On Wing, he is quoted saying "Musical expression is bodily expression, there is no abstract cerebral expression in my opinion. It all comes out of the body." A recurring theme in his music is the fusion of or relationship between the mechanical and the organic. He has also stated that his time in California has helped him to be more "free" in his compositions.

Here is an audio collection of his thoughts about his musical career, and among other things we learn how much he admires Stravinsky, and how, when he was growing up, he hated the music of Jean Sibelius.

Listen!

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