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Esa-Pekka Salonen
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Esa-Pekka Salonen is renowned for his interpretations of contemporary music and has given countless premieres of new works.
Born in Helsinki, Esa-Pekka Salonen studied at the Sibelius Academy and made his conducting debut with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra in 1979. In 1985 he was appointed Chief Conductor of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, where he remained for ten years, and in 1985 took up the post of Principal Guest Conductor of The Philharmonia, which he held until 1994. He was Director of the Helsinki Festival in 1995 and 1996. Esa-Pekka Salonen is currently Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, a position he will hold until summer 2009. From the beginning of the 2008/09 season, Salonen will take up the position of Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor of the Philharmonia Orchestra in London.
Esa-Pekka Salonen’s guest conducting engagements in the season 2008/09 include appearances with the NDR-Sinfonieorchester, the Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Orchestre de Paris and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. With the Philharmonia Orchestra, Salonen will perform several concerts across Europe, among them Brussels, Cologne, Amsterdam, Gothenburg, Vienna and Madrid. He will tour Asia with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in October 2008.
Salonen is the recipient of many major awards including the Siena Prize by the Accademia Chigiana in 1993, the first conductor ever to receive the prize; in 1995 he was awarded the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Opera Award and in 1997 received its Conductor Award. In 1998 he was awarded the rank of Officier de l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. In May 2003 he received an honorary doctorate from the Sibelius Academy in Finland and in 2005 the Helsinki Medal of the city. Musical America named Salonen as its "Musician of the Year 2006".
Esa-Pekka Salonen is renowned for his interpretations of contemporary music and has given countless premieres of new works. He has led critically acclaimed festivals of music by Berlioz, Ligeti, Schoenberg, Shostakovich, and Stravinsky and Magnus Lindberg. In April 2006 he returned to Opéra Bastille to conduct the premiere of Kaija Saariaho’s new opera, Adriana Mater, after having conducted the Finnish premiere of her first opera L’amour de loin in 2004. In August 2007, he conducted Saariaho’s La Passion de Simone in a production by Peter Sellars at the Helsinki Festival (first Finnish performance) and then took the production to Stockholm, to the Baltic Sea Festival.
Esa-Pekka Salonen records for Deutsche Grammophon. Releases include a disc of Salonen works performed with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and a DVD of Kaija Saariaho’s opera, L’Amour de loin with the Finnish National Opera as well as two CDs with Hélène Grimaud of works by Pärt and Schumann.
The first recording of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Salonen for Deutsche Grammophon (Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring – the first CD recording ever at Walt Disney Concert Hall) was released in October 2006 and nominated for a Grammy in December 2007. After recording for Sony Classical for many years, Salonen has an extensive discography with repertoire ranging from Mahler and Revueltas to Magnus Lindberg and his own works.
Tonight is the second time that Esa-Pekka Salonen has conducted at Leeds International Concert Season. His debut here was in 1986 with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducting Beethoven’s third piano concerto with Mitsuko Uchida and Mahler’s Symphony No 1.
Book for Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting the Philharmonia as part of Leeds International Concert Season
