Creativity Quote by Esa-Pekka Salonen

Sound, for Salonen, isn’t a pretty byproduct of performance; it’s the governing politics of the room. The line reads like a practical note from rehearsal, but it’s really a quiet manifesto about orchestras in the modern era: ensembles aren’t just unified bodies, they’re networks of individual self-awareness. When “every musician can hear his or herself,” he’s pointing to a shift in conditions (often driven by hall design, staging, recording expectations, even monitoring culture) that changes how players calibrate identity versus blend. Self-audibility sounds like a gift. It can also become a trap: the more you hear yourself, the more you’re tempted to protect your own line, your own timbre, your own correctness.

The second clause tightens the screw. What matters isn’t merely what each musician hears, but “the way each of them relates to the musician in the next seat.” That adjacency is orchestral life at its most intimate and most unforgiving: the micro-timing, the shared bowing, the breathing, the tiny negotiations over vibrato and articulation. Salonen’s intent is less about chasing a pristine, abstract “sound” than engineering conditions where listening becomes social again, where musicians stop playing at the hall (or the imagined recording) and start playing with each other.

Subtext: a conductor’s job isn’t only interpretation; it’s acoustical diplomacy. Great orchestral sound is collective trust made audible, and trust begins one seat at a time.