Creativity Quote by Esa-Pekka Salonen

Salonen’s line sounds almost comically modest for a conductor-composer who can dismantle and rebuild an orchestra’s sound in real time. “Every day we make more progress” frames the concert hall not as a neutral container but as a stubborn instrument: something you have to learn, negotiate, and occasionally outsmart. The intent is pragmatic - a working musician’s reminder that performance isn’t only about the score and the players. It’s also about air, wood, angles, and the weird politics of architectural taste.

The subtext is a quiet rebuke to the fantasy that great music “speaks for itself.” In Salonen’s world, music speaks through infrastructure. A hall’s acoustics can flatter detail or blur it into sonic wallpaper; it can reward risk or punish it. Saying we’re “understanding” the hall implies we haven’t, historically. That lands as a critique of centuries of concert culture that treated the venue as prestige branding - plush seats, chandeliers, donor names - while musicians adapted in the shadows, changing tempi, articulation, even repertoire to survive the room.

Context matters: Salonen came of age as orchestras became more globally mobile and as cities entered a mini arms race of signature halls. New builds promised “perfect” sound; musicians kept discovering that perfection is a moving target, dependent on audience size, programming, and how an ensemble balances on a given night. His phrasing also slips in a collective “we,” widening responsibility beyond the maestro. Understanding the concert hall becomes a shared, ongoing craft - part science, part humility - and a reminder that tradition is often just accumulated workarounds.