Born in Helsinki in 1958, Esa-Pekka Salonen studied at the Finnish capital’s Sibelius Academy. His subjects included horn with Holger Fransman, conducting with Jorma Panula, and composition with Einojuhani Rautavaara. In 1979 he made his conducting debut with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, and in 1985 he was named head of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, where he remained for a decade. Between 1992 and the summer of 2009, Salonen was Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. Since the 2008-09 season he has been serving as head of the Philharmonia Orchestra, where he had already been active for a period of nine years at the beginning of his career as Principal Guest Conductor. Additionally, since 2003 he has been involved as artistic director of the Baltic Sea Festival, which he cofounded. As a guest conductor, Esa-Pekka Salonen has appeared with many renowned ensembles on both sides of the Atlantic. He has conducted opera productions at the Salzburg Festival, the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala in Milan, and the Paris National Opera, among others. Especially valued as an interpreter of modern music, Esa-Pekka Salonen has himself earned an international reputation as a composer, including such distinctions as the UNESCO Rostrum Prize. His works have been performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the NHK Symphony Orchestra, and other leading ensembles. Esa-Pekka Salonen has recorded his repertoire, which encompasses a broad stylistic spectrum, from Bach to film music and from Haydn to Magnus Lindberg and Kaija Saariaho, on numerous prize-winning CDs. He holds the Siena Prize of the Accademia Chigiana and the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Conductor Award; additionally, he is an Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, an honorary doctor of the Sibelius Academy, and an Honorary Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2006 the magazine Musical America named Salonen “Musician of the Year.”
LUCERNE FESTIVAL (IMF) debut on April 10, 1993 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra in works by Haydn, Beethoven, and Nielsen.
May 2010